National Geographic Society

Reenergizing an iconic Org's digital brand.

PURPOSE

Every now and then we at Versed get lucky enough to tackle a real passion project. That's
not to say we don't love all our clients equally, because we do. Very much so – we promise. But some organizations have a mission and a set of ideals - like discovery, intellectual curiosity, and adventure - that truly inspire. The National Geographic Society is one of those orgs.

From the onset, 3 principal objectives were made clear. First, they were looking to enhance its digital relationship with its B2B donors and partners, while referring its B2C traffic to the .Com website. Second, they were looking to extend and optimize the brand's digital reach, mission, and the online donation process through clear and consistent user experience. Lastly, they wanted to introduce a more mature experience design and visual language to the .Org website.

Services
Brand Strategy
Art Direction
Experience Design
Information Architecture
Animation / Motion Graphics

Visit
www.nationalgeographic.org

PROCESS

From the jump, we wanted to curate a nice blend of iterative creativity and progressive optimization as audience understanding improved. Over the course of ~9 design sprints, we uncorked a mélange of activities centered around minting new design tokens and establishing a creative baseline. This was mainly comprised of accelerated discovery, initial concept exploration, navigation studies, and a current-state brand audit, heavily collaborating with the Nat Geo project team all along the way.

Once we had alignment around where we wanted to take the look and feel of the .Org, we moved into focused creative ideation and production; activities ranging from custom iconography illustrations, photography curation, and micro animations, to larger thematic brand components such as the primary ID and badge, page-level UX, typographic scale, and other component extension.

Working with National Geographic to help elevate its mission was one of those "design for good" moments that every designer seeks.

Larry Levine

Creative Lead

PAYOFF

We were successfully able to facilitate a completely revamped design and digital brand presence for the National Geographic Society. Not only did we revitalize the user experience of the entire .Org web presence, but we created a distinctly evolved and optimized visual representation of the NGS brand as a whole. Through our comprehensive approach and design methodology, we were able to hit and exceed the 3 primary project goals, and have positioned NGS to better tell its story to audiences new and old.

National Geographic Society is an impact-driven, non-profit organization centered around bold and impactful Explorer-led programs.