Unique organizations call for uncommon branding and web solutions — and CultureWorks is no exception.
This rapidly growing management commons offers co-working space and a full complement of back-end business support services for members of the vibrant arts, culture, and creative communities.
Looking back to 2010, when CultureWorks was founded in Philadelphia, we created their brand identity, collateral, and website. This year, with the organization poised to expand into additional locations, we were selected once again to help the brand evolve to reflect this growing organization and create a website design framework that will be rolled out to support their growth in Philadelphia, Houston, and beyond, with an additional iteration created for the overarching organization.
The current community is composed of a large and diverse set of individual members, team members, consultants, and organizations, and we felt the identity could be adjusted and made more vibrant to make the organization stand out amongst more typical co-working spaces while also feeling true to the culture that had developed. The organization also needed an identity system that allowed them to easily create related identities for new cities. We added color and explored a bold and vibrant design system to carry the visual identity to the next level, and began by creating a simple system that we applied to Philadelphia, Houston, and their Commons Management organization.
The new site design framework puts the focus squarely on the vital relationship between CultureWorks and its members, as well as the various levels of services offered. It features rich individual and organizational member profiles, searchable by specialty, in addition to detailed board member and partner profiles.
Members and other community members can submit events to the community, knowledge-based content, and more — and all of this related content can be linked back and associated with a member, organization, partner, or Cultureworks team member. The sites were also created with the ability to cross-post content across different geographies and the parent site in order to share insights, provide resources to local members, and demonstrate the power of this creative community. This approach not only showcases the strength the organization gains from crowdsourced thought leadership, but it also serves as a powerful marketing vehicle by illustrating the far-reaching benefits members enjoy through their ongoing association over time.
We also created a suite of brand collateral and promotional materials along with a brand use guide, showing the community members how to represent materials consistently in different applications, including social media, print promotions, and even business stationery and collateral.
