Designing A Website To Reflect Innovative Mission

The race to find ways to manage climate change’s effects is becoming ever more urgent and the recently-opened Ian L. McHarg Center at The University of Pennsylvania School of Design aims to achieve that. A center that cites innovation in its mission needs its website to reflect that, and Dyal Branding & Graphics, A Page Company, has successfully designed one.

The client recognized that although the Center’s namesake is well-known in circles such as landscape architecture, they wanted to reach a wider, global audience in a friendly and approachable way. The site showcases the innovative content being generated at the Center based on McHarg’s ideals and goals.

The Center is working with environmental and social scientists together with planners, designers, policy-makers, and communities to develop innovative ways to improve the quality of life in places vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Thus, the website needed to reflect its varied activities and appeal to its varied audiences.

“The intersection of climate change and design is so complex and urgent, the site could easily be overwhelming. But the Page team helped us achieve a directness and restraint in the design that really supports public dialogue,” said Michael Grant, who spearheaded the project for PennDesign as its director of communications.

The McHarg Center logo is an abstraction inspired by the archetypal cover of Design with Nature, a book written by McHarg. The Dyal Branding & Graphics team’s intent was to create a flexible identity that avoids cliches and common devices which are often employed in the environmental movement. Like the Center’s work, the site design is intended to be fresh and contemporary.

Page Designer Julie Pizzo said, “Designing this website was particularly interesting to me because of the McHarg Center’s activism, their focus on practical innovation, and their future-thinking and collaborative considerations for design solutions to combat climate change. We couldn’t be happier to have been involved in this type of design project with a client that has the opportunity to impact social change.”

To view the new site, click here.

To learn more about the Branding & Graphics Studio, click here.