Equal Rights Advocates (ERA) is a national civil rights organization dedicated to protecting and expanding economic and educational opportunities for women and girls. With an almost 50-year history of advancing equality in work and schools, ERA is the home of visionary leaders, unflinching advocates, and hard-nosed litigators for justice.
Equal Rights Advocates (ERA) challenged Teal with a legacy website that was overloaded with content and had an outdated look-and-feel. People who needed legal help had trouble finding key resources, and supporters who wanted to get involved didn’t know where to start.
Teal transformed ERA’s cluttered, top-down website into a bold, streamlined digital platform that expresses the essence of ERA, enables visitors to find help and information quickly and easily, and empowers people to speak up and raise their voices.
A Modernized Brand
A Refreshed Visual Identity
We modernized ERA by refreshing the organization’s look-and-feel. ERA had built significant brand recognition with the Lady Justice logo mark during their 50 year history — we needed to retain that important asset.
We created a refreshed visual identity system that centered around Lady Justice. We made minor updates to the logo mark; introduced vibrant, bold new colors like a trailblazing yellow and purple; and utilized a streamlined, straightforward typography system.
Rooting Our Decisions in Research
A Custom Website that Captures the Essence of ERA
Teal spoke with ERA’s target audiences to ensure that their needs were at the heart of our solution. We learned a number of things from these conversations:
People in crisis don’t have time to browse, filter, and hunt for resources. They need help, and they need it ASAP
One of the main reasons people visit the website is to download ERA’s “Know Your Rights” tools — those resources needed to be easy to find and use
Personal stories are great motivators. ERA activists told us that they wanted to see the human face behind ERA’s legal work, and people who need legal help wanted to see that ERA helps people who look like them
Some of ERA’s content contains technical, legal jargon. Audiences need this content to be written in plain language so it is easy to understand and digest
Those seeking legal help from ERA want clear information about what the “ERA Experience” will look like if they decide to take legal action
ERA supporters want to be involved with an organization that is a thought leader in the space and reflects the people that ERA serves
With this strong foundation of research, Teal and ERA worked together during an in-person workshop to develop a vision for the website, plot user journeys, and prioritize content, features, and functionality that would best serve the needs of ERA’s audiences.
Bringing it all together
Together, ERA and Teal crafted a website that…
Offers global clear, and direct pathways for people who need immediate legal help, in an always-accessible ‘Legal Help drawer’
Dramatically streamlines the presentation and volume of content, improving usability by emphasizing focus and clarity
Establishes an Action Center that offers multiple ways for people to get involved and take action. Actions also display dynamically throughout the site on relevant pages
Brings ERA’s ‘Know Your Rights’ educational resources to the forefront. Our research showed that these resources were the primary reason people visited the ERA website, so they needed to be front-and-center and easily to access
Communicates ERA’s impact through first-person stories of clients who have benefitted from the legal assistance they’ve received from ERA
Highlights the issues ERA works on, explains why they are so important, and offers clear ways for website visitors to make progress, and take action on those issues.
Elevates ERA’s insights and viewpoints to establish them as key leaders in the economic and educational justice space.
Includes a Spanish-language section that offers immediate help and critical tools to the Latinx community, which is strongly impacted by the issues ERA tackles
Brand Collateral
Expanding ERA’s New Visual Identity
ERA knows that a website is just one component of their broader communications toolkit. Teal created a suite of collateral and templates for ERA that matches their new look-and-feel, including:
HTML email template
Social media graphic templates
Organizational overview 1-pager
Case for Support report
We are gobsmacked. When we asked Teal to ‘Make us Modern,’ we knew we would look better but we didn’t know that form and function would combine so that we related better and communicated better to our audiences. Everything is aligned – our brand value; our mission; our vision. And that alignment combines not only to make our outside match our inside but creates an experience that centers the experiences & stories of the people who come to us. It’s a site design that conceptually mirrors our strategic goals as a gender justice organization – to be action oriented, inclusive, boundary pushing, and responsive. Yes, the work with Teal came in on budget – but more importantly, it exceeded my strategic vision. I’m going to pick up my jaw now.
