Hi, I am Louise, Marketing & IT Officer at YAA. I have been with the agency for 8 years.
I have recently had the opportunity to work on YAA’s branding redesign which has been an amazing and massive job!
As it has been a very exciting time, I thought I would highlight a bit about why we decided to refresh our website and colour scheme.
Why did we do it?
It has been thought for a while that our website had become quite clunky. It was full of images and text that I felt didn’t really highlight the wonderful work we do every day.
After discussing a few ideas with our management team and wonderful board of Trustees, the ball started rolling with specific support from three of our Trustees and our Business Manager, Suzie!
We wanted to capture YAA’s fresh, holistic approach to beginning the adoption process, our fun, welcoming team of staff and Trustees who work hard to empower the families we work with to help them realise their potential in becoming successful parents.
My highlights
I love to be creative and working collaboratively really helped me explore new ideas and revisit some old ones too, which has definitely been my favourite part.
Looking at colours and designs that reflect the above, and some input from our Director, Sue, we felt springtime – a time for celebrating new beginnings was a great fit. A real challenge has been the demand on time as I am a bit of a perfectionist so juggling more tasks during the week was hard work!
What I have particularly enjoyed has been introducing the Trustees to Microsoft Teams, which the staff team use every day. It has made things easy to work on together and to share thoughts and ideas in the design process. It has given them an insight into our daily work which I think they have found insightful.
I also feel like it has encouraged positive relationships between staff and trustees, which I have not had much experience with, but has been really rewarding and how, I think, working in a charity should be.
What I have learned
I have learned a lot from this piece of work, but my main takeaways would be;
- How to keep on top of the website’s design and functions so it will stay up to date and fresh for everyone accessing it, from Scott who supported me with the site build.
- More about SEO and what to think about when creating content for our site, from Molly who supported me with visual content and social media.
- The importance of tone within the copy on our site and how it is understood by anyone accessing our website, from Ron who has supported me with understanding meaningful writing and language.
Also, I would like to give a huge thank you to Suzie and Sue who have always supported me in my work and helped make change happen!
If you would like to contribute any ideas or thoughts on our updated website, please leave a comment! We are always looking for ways to improve our high standards of service.