The Why Foundation

The Why Foundation is a documentary film production and distribution company that focuses on social impact and human rights.

They were in desperate need of an updated and more functional website.

An NGO or a Film Company?

The challenge for this build was to straddle the line between a traditional NGO website and a video-focused site built around a library of films.

We accomplished this by having the NGO mission-oriented pages be bright and full of white space while the film library mimics the natural shadow of cinema as a contrast.

Heavy on Info

The Why does a lot of different things:

  • They produce their own documentaries,

  • Partner with the BBC to buy and distribute pre-made documentaries worldwide,

  • Arrange screenings of their films for schools,

  • Tartner with other NGOs around the globe to spread access to their films,

  • Translate their films into underserved languages like Gagauz and Georgian,

  • Operate a robust network of Youtube channels in languages like Russian, Arabic, and Hindi.

With all that activity, we needed to design and build a website that would be both easy to navigate while also displaying a wealth of information.

To do this, I worked with The Why on conceptualizing several "buckets" under which they could organize their work and better contextualize the many different ways that they accomplish their goals of spreading quality information.

Using these buckets, I arranged and built several sections of the website to guide the user through the relevent themes and topics that The Why's work encompasses.

Accessibility

The Why's site has hundreds of visitors every day from every corner of the globe, so their site needed to be accessible to people using the technology avaliable to them. From high-tech to low-tech. As such, we spent just as much time designing and ensuring functionability for mobile as we did for desktop.

Like what you see?

Give me a holler: howdy@amos.design

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