Competition was growing from organizations like TED, who were reaching a highly diverse audience using a more modern approach. At the same time, being perceived as a quintessentially “Washington” organization was becoming increasingly challenging in a divisive new political era. WSB reached out for help reimagining the way they tell their organizational story and market their speakers. The result was a complete overhaul of their site’s branding, user interface design, and backend infrastructure.

We explored several new brand concepts for WSB — some focused on their unique organizational expertise, while others highlighted the value their speakers provide. Ultimately we selected a brand direction called “To Share is Human”, a concept that grew out of the realization that sharing ideas is at the root of our humanity. This strategy positions WSB as “the champions of the shared idea” — an advocate for both the speakers who share them, and for the audiences who spread those ideas around the world.

Based on this brand direction we began a complete overhaul of WSB’s visual system and editorial style. This included a new vision for design, photography, video, voice, and content hierarchy. We also gave WSB’s logo a refresh that modernized its look and digital usability. To help WSB’s design and content team leverage the new strategy, we produced a full complement of brand deliverables, including: a brand vision deck; a brand style guide for visual design, editorial voice, and brand extension; and content strategy guides for both structure and substance.

We also developed a content “triage” plan to help prioritize the content migration team’s efforts and progressively update their almost 40-year-old brand. We outlined 5 basic page levels that represented increasingly robust and labor- intensive update efforts, and made preliminary recommendations for which pages should be updated first. This means WSB can focus their content resources on their highest priority communication areas — like their exclusive speaker profile pages — without the entire system feeling like it’s still “under construction”.