Evanston Community Foundation
Inspiring Action, Building Community
Our Approach
Evanston Community Foundation mobilizes community resources to drive systemic social change, guided by Ubuntu — "I am because you are" — and a deep commitment to building a just and inclusive community. Working closely with their team, we recognized an opportunity to evolve their brand identity to match their bold vision and impactful community work. Through a comprehensive discovery process including staff surveys, stakeholder interviews, content audits, and collaborative workshops, we uncovered a crucial insight about how ECF works: as a "conscientious rule breaker," they challenge traditional philanthropy while maintaining deep roots in Evanston's diverse community. This distinctive approach required a strong brand system as purposeful as their work.
What We Delivered
Through close collaboration with ECF, we developed a holistic rebrand that began with comprehensive discovery findings and brand strategy, informing our refinement of their mission, vision, and values statements. This foundation let our design team develop a solid visual identity system and ground-up website redesign. Our visual and digital approach captured both ECF’s innovative methodology and their role as a hub for community change. The result transformed ECF’s presence from practical to visionary and ensured every touchpoint remained welcoming and intuitive for Evanston’s diverse community.
Strategy + Research
Our discovery process revealed a pivotal moment for ECF — they were already embodying a bold new vision for community philanthropy, but their brand hadn’t caught up. Through stakeholder interviews and collaborative workshops, we identified our key strategic direction: ECF needed to balance being a groundbreaking force for change while maintaining the deep trust that made them uniquely Evanston’s foundation.
Design and Activation
As we worked to develop an uplifted and reimagined identity, we helped their team envision and create designed templates and best practices. Our approach balanced forward-momentum with institutional wisdom through a considered type system — pairing a bold compressed sans serif with a refined traditional serif. This duality carried through the entire design language, creating a flexible system that could confidently express both ECF’s innovative spirit and their deep community roots.
Typography
Typography forms the expressive core of ECF’s visual identity. The foundation of visual and verbal identity relies on Klim Type Foundry’s National 2 and Commercial Type’s Caslon Ionic families. These families are present from logo to paragraphs and reflect the dual nature of ECF’s work — from bold, immediate impact to established community wisdom. Adding a touch of spontaneity is Ohno Casual Thin in uppercase, its fluid, gestural forms bringing warmth to communications while creating moments of engaging contrast within the typographic system.
A set of unique icons was developed to extend ECF’s visual language and establish intuitive digital wayfinding. Each icon balances geometric precision with purposeful simplicity, creating a cohesive family that guides users effectively through content.
Website
After fifteen years with an outdated digital home that hindered rather than helped their mission, ECF needed a complete rework of their website. Their previous site buried important content, made updates nearly impossible, and failed to showcase the foundation’s vital community work and impact.
The new site prioritizes accessibility and intuitive navigation while creating space for ECF’s impact to shine. Clear pathways guide users through content, dynamic layouts showcase community stories, and a streamlined content management system empowers their team to keep the site fresh and engaging. The result is a digital presence that truly reflects ECF’s role as a catalyst for community change.
Large and clear navigation menus allow visitors to parse the site like a table of contents. Key pages are revealed under larger categories which are useful for experienced and new visitors alike.
Built into the menu are optional language and accessibility toggles. These allow visitors to limit motion and colors to improve contrast and usability delivering an experience more suited to their needs.
Brand Guidelines
Our brand guide packaged ECF’s design system and brand strategy into clear, actionable guidance that called out the need for varying levels of expression. The system establishes a spectrum from Core ECF — the foundational brand elements that maintain institutional trust — to Events & Extensions that invite more dynamic, expressive applications in social media and in-person events. Supported by insights and discovery, the guidelines empower their design team to adapt their visual tonality while maintaining a cohesive identity.
Events + Extensions
Building from ECF’s core identity, we created a dynamic system for their events and community programming that invites more expressive visual moments. This extension of the brand maintains foundational elements while embracing bolder compositions, playful typography treatments, and energetic layouts. The result is a seamless range of visual expression that can flex between measured institutional communications and lively community engagement, while remaining distinctly ECF.
“It’s such a relief to have a consistent and cohesive brand identity both online and in our print materials — something that really helps us stand out.”
— Robby Bardwell, Senior Director of Development