How do you design a publication about risk for the very people and organizations most often averse to it?
Earlier this year, The Communications Network asked us to design the latest edition of their Change Agent publication.
The goal of Change Agent is to empower professional communicators to realize meaningful change at their organizations. In our experience, change at non-profits, foundations, and other social institutions usually begins with a small, quiet rebellion — a cohort of people willing to speak hard truths until they are heard. Then one day, after much persistence and data and consideration, the change has finally taken hold. Of course by then a new and needed change is looking for champions.
At organizations where so much is at stake — often people’s lives or well-being — it can be hard to advocate for an idea or a project that may not immediately result in success.
Concept
This is one of the many reasons why we suggested “Risk” as this issue’s theme.
We are in the business of helping our clients and our partners to think bigger, to be more ambitious, to take calculated risks. For our clients, risk can take a lot of forms — sometimes it’s piloting a new platform, other times it’s embracing an aspirational 5-year plan. Risk is not for the cautious, but, oh, is it rich with both promise and reward.
Design
Threespot is most often employed as a digital strategy firm, which means we’re typically thinking in wireframes instead of page bleeds. Still, we’re up for a creative challenge, and applying our digital reflexes to a traditional print design pushed us in healthy ways. Plus, it was an opportunity for us to use magenta and we love magenta.
We blue-skied several concepts with The Communications Network team before ultimately arriving at our “Risk” theme. From there, we were given freedom to make the issue our own.
Our designs began with Alfred Hitchcock–type imagery, but ultimately it was the Rube Goldberg Machine concept that would become the driver for our work. Getting important work done is often messy and byzantine — what better mechanism to illustrate that feeling than an overwrought mousetrap and a little self-deprecating humor?
The cover was illustrated by our friend Al Murphy, based on a sketch by Threespot designer Laura Fortner. Every member of the Threespot design team participated in the project; under the art direction of Chris Montwill, our team sought to continually re-cast risk as opportunity.
Content
Before we arrived at our theme, we had reviewed copies of the ten articles that would make up this issue. They were filled with big, aspirational concepts, and we knew it would important for readers to understand how these same themes could be applied at any organization.
Our content and creative teams put their heads together and imagined how we might make a story about ISIS propaganda resonate with people like our typical clients — arts organizations, federal agencies, and health advocates. What we arrived at are our “Digital Strategy Essentials,” actionable worksheets spread throughout the issue that can also be downloaded and shared with teams. They tackle useful concepts like understanding your audience and building a measurement strategy
Final Product
At Threespot, we collaborate with some of the largest, most successful, and best-known nonprofits and foundations in the world. We’ve learned a lot about how they work and what we’ve discovered is that it’s actually their deep dedication to a cause that can also make them the most cautious. When you are part of a large, impact-producing, generation-spanning organization, stewardship is always going to be on your mind. You don’t want to be the one that fucks all that good work up.
But you know what? Even #gettingslizzerd worked out for the Red Cross (eventually).
We live in a reality where change is the only constant. In our world, embracing risk is the only way to take your organization into a future that is better and more exciting than anywhere it’s been before.
Be sure to check out our Digital Strategy Essentials series—advice we would give you if we were in the same room.
