The American Retirement Association (ARA) is a professional membership organization comprised of five sister associations. Located in Washington, DC, they are dedicated to educating a retirement plan and benefits professionals and creating a policy framework to give the American workforce a comfortable retirement.
ARA Original Approach
The American Retirement Association (ARA) sought Adage's expertise to revamp its digital presence and functionality. The goals included enhancing the CMS for increased flexibility, refining search, and news functionality, and refreshing the visual appeal to resonate with a younger audience. Adage undertook a comprehensive rebranding initiative, extending across not only the primary ARA site, but also the websites of its affiliated sister organizations under the ARA umbrella.
Updated Digital Branding and Flexible CMS Experience
Adage began the digital brand exploration by reviewing primarily print-focused brand guidelines, which lacked specific rules for digital elements like type scale and color palette. Through a collaborative brand exploration workshop with key stakeholders, Adage identified which brand elements were best suited for evolution into the digital ecosystem, before applying new combinations, treatments, and values to color, type, and illustration. This approach aimed for a brighter and more youthful feel while maintaining ARA's reputation as a thought leader, and retaining familiarity for current users while welcoming new ones. While legibility and simplicity remain paramount, new brand elements were introduced to enhance visual interest where needed.
Font Selection: The choice of Jubilat as the new primary font reflects a desire to convey qualities such as thought leadership, prestige, and longevity. Its versatility as a variable font and its modern yet classic serif style align well with ARA's positioning.
Color Palette: Retaining the classic ARA blue and red while introducing a new gray color provides a foundation for the updated color palette. The addition of bright hues for CTAs and dark hues for theming adds depth and visual interest to the website while maintaining coherence.
Illustration Elements: Introducing illustration styles beyond those in the existing Brand Guidelines offers users creative flexibility within the CMS. Offering a selection of four different illustration styles ensures variety without overwhelming users or cluttering the website.
Systematic Design Approach: The systematic design approach ensures consistency across sister sites, streamlining the implementation process, and reinforcing the cohesive brand identity.
Seamless Sister Website Theming
While all of the sister sites fall under the same organization, members vary between them and the individual websites needed to clearly reflect those differences. Adage ensured consistency across all sister sites under the ARA umbrella by maintaining uniform typography and UI design while customizing color systems and theming to align with individual brand guidelines. Reimagining the brand color palettes for easy integration into the CMS, Adage ensured that each sister site had access to the same range of hues, harmonizing the digital presence of all ARA-affiliated websites while accommodating their distinct brand identities and retaining a familiar feel for all existing users.
Despite the uniformity in typography and UI design, each sister site maintains a distinctive appearance thanks to the wide range of theming and customization options available within the CMS. This flexibility empowers CMS users to create unique and highly individualized brand experiences for each site, ensuring that each brand under the ARA umbrella can express its identity effectively online.
Improved Functionality Across the Website
ARA aimed to enhance user experience across its website, focusing on improved functionality for easier content navigation. Updates included an enhanced calendar showcasing both digital and in-person events, refined search capabilities with customizable filtering and result highlighting, and improvements to the article landing page.
Search functionality was tailored for maximum flexibility, allowing CMS users to pin, highlight, or add properties to search results, while filters enable targeted content exploration by sister site or category. Popular search results can be dynamically highlighted and managed by CMS users.
Similarly, the News landing page offers flexible customization options. Additional templates were introduced for event detail pages, a versatile calendar with traditional and list views, and article detail pages. In total, Adage developed 10 new page templates, ensuring adaptability and flexibility for future updates.
A Brand New Website Focused on Flexibility and Longevity
Adage executed a thorough overhaul of brand application, UI, and UX, crafting a new digital experience catering to both present and future ARA members. Emphasizing flexibility and control, decisions were guided by the goal of ensuring the website's adaptability to ARA's evolving needs. This approach guarantees that as ARA expands and evolves, its digital platform will seamlessly grow alongside the organization, serving its members effectively.
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