The LGBTQ Community Center of the Desert
Building a platform that promotes a safe and welcoming environment for the LGBTQ community
Industry
Nonprofit
Social Impact
Industry
Nonprofit
Social Impact
Services
Brand Sprint
Visual Identity
Brand Messaging
Brand Guideline
UX/UI Design
Graphic Design
Web Design
Web Development
Photography
SEO
Web Analytics & Tracking
The Challenge
The LGBTQ Community Center of the Desert is a nonprofit that began in 1998. Throughout the past 2020-2021 year alone, they have accumulated a total attendance of over 32,000 for programs and events. With such engagement, The Center approached us to give their digital presence a refresh to keep up with their ever growing exposure and attention from interested, new, and current members. Our team conducted a full rebrand that would reinvigorate The Center’s digital presence to keep up with the speed at which their Center community was growing. With new leadership, ideas, and members, The Center wanted to create a presence that would not only stand the test of time, but also function as the knowledge hub for all events, membership, and giving. The rebrand would carry into creating a modern website that connects and informs the communities that they are serving in the Coachella Valley. Although their website served its original purpose, it only touched on the basics. What it lacked was a user-friendly website architecture/navigation and a design that reflected The Center uniquely. Additionally, the website was not ADA compliant nor accessible for non-native English speakers, which limited the ability to connect with the diverse community The Center has fostered over the years.
The Results
Through an inspirational collaboration between our team and The Center, we successfully conducted a rebrand that more accurately represents The Center’s personality and values. In addition, our team created a platform that fully encompasses the beliefs and mission of The Center from now and into the future. With design created to be both welcoming and pleasing to the eye, the new website offers several different features such as Spanish translation, easy navigation tools, and accessible contact and subscription forms that make it approachable to the diverse community it caters to.
“Our non-profit here in the Coachella Valley hired Free Logic to help us develop a new website that would bring our outdated one into the 21st century and be both technologically & aesthetically functional on all devices. Not only were they a joy to work with during the process, but they also delivered exactly what we had been needing in a new website. We have had nothing but positive feedback from on our new website since its launch and are being contacted more than ever from new people inquiring about our services and from long-time community members who are appreciative of us having a more user-friendly website that also looks good!”
Rob Wheeler |
Executive Director & CEO, The LGBTQ Center
Our Approach
We began this website revamp by leading a Brand Sprint with The Center’s leadership team to zero in on their target audience, values, and determine the organization’s why, how, and what statements. The findings gathered from the Brand Sprint, combined with insights gained from a stakeholder interview with The Center, allowed us to determine the needs for their new brand and website. With those needs in mind, we designed a unique website user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) that not only catered to The Center’s target audience, but also reflected The Center’s values, vision, and mission. In addition to design and content creation, we also made community involvement more appealing and intuitive by integrating website functionalities such as a new calendar system, bilingual translation, and more.
Key Steps in Reinvigorating The LGBTQ Center’s Brand
1. Defining a brand image through a Brand Sprint with the leadership team.
2. Drawing interest and engagement through storytelling.
3. Structuring the website to rally engagement from not only local members, but also visitors from all over.
All New, All Inclusive LGBTQ Center of the Desert
The LGBTQ Center of the Desert is a household name in the Coachella Valley area, offering a wide assortment of services and events to the diverse community that it serves. Our first step in reinventing The Center’s branding was to define a new brand image through a Brand Sprint with The Center’s leadership team. The Brand Sprint allowed the whole leadership team to collectively decide on their target audience, organization’s key values, personalities, vision, mission, and competitive landscape – all of which would guide our decisions later on as we designed the website’s UX as well as UI elements. The Center’s brand colors and fonts are intentionally chosen to reflect their brand personalities and values which are Integrity, Equity, and Joy. We brought those values to life by designing a pastel gradient to the background of The Center’s web pages as well as eye-catching hues for the symbols of each of their services, emulating the colorful community they foster and care for.
A Strong Vision Calls for Strong Storytelling
With design and branding solidified, the next steps were to create messaging that not only embodied both the mission and values of The Center, but also would garner the attention and interest of individuals wanting to get involved themselves. Firstly, we nailed down the voice and tone of The Center. As discovered in the Brand Sprint exercise, The Center wanted to shift their tone to be less professional and rigid to more warm and welcoming. We ensured that with every touchpoint a new or returning website visitor comes across, they would understand the mission of The Center. Good storytelling and messaging is accomplished when a visitor enters the website and within seconds, they understand the mission, vision, impact, and breadth of The Center – and we did just that.
Developing Easy Access for a Diverse Community
The Center’s big vision is to drive inclusion so that anyone, whether near or far, would feel part of a community. Knowing this, our team implemented a calendar software that allowed ease of use not only on the frontend, but also the backend. Both their in-person events and online events were made with user experience in mind; online events had registration links, Zoom meeting room links, and event information all organized within the calendar event listing. In this way, attendance for The Center’s events were not limited to The Valley, but their event reach would go beyond the state. Our calendar implementation was able to shave down the events page, which slimmed down the number of broken pages to help boost their SEO ranking and presence.
Scope of Work
Branding
Brand Sprint
Visual Identity
Brand Messaging
Brand Guideline
Website
UX/UI Design
Graphic Design
Wireframes & High-Fidelity Mockups
Website Architecture for SEO
Translation Strategy & Implementation
Calendar Strategy & Implementation
Web Analytics
Data Analytics & Tracking
Content
Storyboarding
Website Photography
SEO
Copywriting
SEO Architecture
