Launching an identity and website for a brand-new nuclear energy think tank
The founders of Good Energy Collective are energy policy writers focused on climate change. They believe that nuclear power can lead the clean energy transition if we can deploy safer technologies and reform the nuclear sector through policies based on social and environmental justice frameworks.
The founders noticed that there was no truly progressive voice for those ideas in the nuclear policy space, so they started Good Energy Collective. They approached me to establish their brand identity and craft a website to launch their new organization.
The clients were active partners in the design process and eagerly participated in several online design workshops I facilitated for them. Together we defined the organization’s mission and strengths, identified their competition and target audiences, and shaped their brand’s positioning, personality, and style.
I worked with the clients to create 2 personas representative of the client’s target audiences: young progressive climate change organizations and lawmakers. These personas were informed by the founder’s past experiences working at other energy think tanks.
Using information from the internal interview, I created a chart to understand where Good Energy Collective fits among its competitors in the nuclear energy policy space. Good Energy Collective’s policies skew far more progressive than other energy policy organizations.
I led a series of online workshops with the clients to co-develop the brand personality and style. I then designed the logo, brand guidelines, and several brand applications.
The final logomark is a serif-style wordmark combining the letters g and e inside a bright green circle, chosen for its associations with nature, freshness, the environment, and energy. I designed it to appeal to the target audiences’ sense of optimism and determination.
I turned the brand's building blocks—visuals, tone, behaviors—into the foundation for the digital strategy. I chose free resources for fonts, icons, and photography to keep costs low and help the clients avoid confusing licensing agreements.
To reduce eye strain and create a more enjoyable reading experience for users, fonts with larger point sizes, limited line-lengths, and wider line-heights were selected, along with a range of header sizes to create a clear hierarchy of information. To balance the contrast between the text and the background colors, various shades of gray were used, while still meeting WCAG AA contrast requirements for accessibility.
Since the site’s main offering is long-form articles and reports, fonts were chosen with readability, legibility, and accessibility at top of mind, while also seeking to convey the brand attributes of wisdom and trustworthiness.
To prepare for the build, I designed a site architecture that could scale easily as the site grew.
I created a prototype in Adobe XD, using colors and fonts from the design system. I also introduced an earthy color for the background to contrast with the brighter page elements.
Leveraging my prior knowledge of HTML & CSS, I built out the site using Webflow, a visual-coding platform I chose for its flexibility and CMS capabilities. This was my first time using the platform but I learned it quickly through video tutorials and articles.
I developed a Styles page and several CMS collections (i.e. content databases) so that the clients could easily update the site themselves in the future. I also crafted dynamic page templates for article posts, staff profiles, press mentions, job listings, and landing pages. These dynamic templates effectively manage content while ensuring the site always looks fresh and can scale easily.
Good Energy Collective is thriving and has secured sustainable funding through The Nuclear Energy Alliance, The Gates Foundation, and The Walker Foundation. They have successfully partnered with young progressive climate change organizations like Data for Progress. Their policies have influenced the Biden administration’s Build Back Better plan and one of the co-founders recently accepted a role as Senior Advisor at the US Department of Energy. The organization continues to shape the current discourse around deploying nuclear energy in an environmentally-just way to fight against climate change.
“Liz created a gorgeous and functional website from scratch for our team. She also helped us articulate our strategy and facilitated multi-stakeholder decision-making processes. She is remarkably talented and a dream to work with. I cannot recommend Liz and her design services highly enough.”
