United Way is a prominent, nation-wide nonprofit addressing inequalities and helping underserved communities across the United States. The Los Angeles branch focuses on breaking the poverty cycle, supporting solutions to homelessness and advancing economic mobility in L.A. United Way of Greater Los Angeles (UWGLA) sought to modernize the face of their organization with a new brand and website that better reflect the work they do and the people they represent.
United Way of Greater Los Angeles is a legacy philanthropy with generations of built trust and impactful work. The new brand honors that legacy, while uplifting the radical, empowering nature of their work, and the humanity of the communities they work with. The brand is empowering and bold, with the flexibility to adopt a knowledgable and professional tone when appropriate.
Typography sets the tone in this ecosystem, flexing between bold or refined, energetic or professional, gutsy or wise. We enhanced UWGLA’s original brand colors with deeper, more vibrant hues, grounded in the energy of Los Angeles. All the while the brand remains approachable, thoughtful, and human.
Graphic elements are pulled from the United Way logo itself and are used to integrate motion and meaning into the identity. Other elements are inspired by the visual language of activism, both digitally and on-the-ground. Paired with compelling community photography, the UW brand feels as dynamic and vibrant as the city it represents.
The brand came to life with the redesign of the UWGLA website, a 50+ page site full of information, resources, events, and impact. After conducting UX discovery, auditing and analysis, we created site maps and information architecture that guided our designs. The scale of the project and the playfulness of the design called for careful balance of modularity and brand expression.
The dynamic nature of the brand elements integrates movement naturally into the system. We brought motion to the brand through interaction and animation design in the website, and through videography and animated graphics for brand collateral.
The brand allows for a range of expression in social and editorial designs. Compositions can be playful and bold, they can be sophisticated and informative, or they can be photo-driven, centering faces and communities.
