Amnesty International: How might we galvanise our global audience to take action?

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WHAT WE DID

We were asked to deliver a best-in-class brand platform for Amnesty’s global website, setting a new benchmark for user interface design and editorial publishing that would help attract new audiences, but continue to speak to Amnesty’s trusted supporter base.

The challenges in the brief were to:

  • Create impact with the strong, but limited, brand elements (yellow is like mustard – use sparingly).
  • Allow the powerful content and images to shine through, telling an authentic story.
  • Talk to multilingual audiences around the globe including academic researchers, legal case workers and human rights activists, as well as attract disengaged youth who are more used to getting their content from Vice or Buzzfeed.

WHY IT'S COOL.

Flexibility: High impact visual design of content without compromising on speed of publishing for 200+ editors all over the world.

Standards: Style guide and templates allow local editors to produce new digital products to a consistently high standard.

Performance: Measurably better than previously: increased pages/session by 7%; average session duration + 15%; site made 30% faster through use of graphical excellence and low page weights, allowing people to consume content in low bandwidth environments.

Storytelling: Provided a suite of interchangeable components to allow editors to craft beautiful compelling content.

On the record: Works with content captured in the field and does not require visual

WHAT PEOPLE SAID.

“As the global face of the brand it was important that the visual design of the new

web platform led the way for the local o ices. We needed a flexible system that could

work for both serious hard-hitting human rights journalism and also inspiring, uplifting campaign stories.

We’re competing against other charities and news organisations for people’s attention

and so the look and feel had to match users expectations. Code worked extremely

collaboratively with my in-house team on this project and as a result, the online visual design is

now leading our o line comms.”

~

Matt Haigh, Head of Design, Amnesty International

“The website is the best way for us to demonstrate the impact of our research to the outside world. Being able to move away from traditional PDF report and to a highly visual way of publishing the findings from our human rights investigations has opened our work out to new audiences and made it more shareable.”

~

Dr Ana Neistat, Senior Director of Research

WHAT’S NEXT?

How might we use social storytelling to help followers become better activists?