With black males in this country facing a 1 in 4 chance of going to prison during their lifetimes, how do you get urban teens to think about career choices? National nonprofit organization, Seedco created a workbook, funded by the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development, to address this issue and tasked Red Rooster Group with making it appealing to the target market.

Workbook

We employed three aspects of design to make this project a success: The first was in organizing the information in a way that would be useful, allowing readers to enter the workbook on any page. All activities are designed to be stand-alone and each page features a strip down the side indicating the activity name and chapter.

Secondly, the overall design uses the vernacular typefaces and images that inner city teens can identify with. Each page in the 160 page workbook is different to keep kids engaged.

And finally, to help as an educational tool, on the bottom of every page, each activity has a series icons indicating the types of skills that the activity builds. This is useful for both the teens, and teachers who are looking for activities to strengthen students’ weaknesses.

“We cannot say enough about the incredible work produced by Howard Levy and the Red Rooster Group! From the professional services, to the thoughtful approach to design work, and creative concepts, the Red Rooster Group has helped us translate our big thinking into eye catching designs relevant for the populations we serve. At this risk of gushing– we just could not do our work without them. We consider the Red Rooster Group to be a valuable partner in our efforts to help low-income individuals become financially self-sufficient.”

— Linda Rodriguez

Senior Manager for Program Development & Technical Assistance

Other Seedco Projects

We have worked with Seedco on numerous projects over the years, including branding and program promotion, event marketing, and publications.

• Seedco EarnMore Campaign
• Seedco Project: Career Guide Engages Urban Teens
• Seedco Policy Reports Establish Credibility
• Seedco Marketing Campaign Promotes Event for Policy Makers

Links

• See other nonprofit publications.
• See nonprofit branding case studies.
• Contact Red Rooster Group for help with your marketing

With 700 employees, Grafton, a nonprofit organization that serves people with autism and other developmental disorders, realized that is had a great opportunity to develop a deeper relationship with its employees and help get its story out.

When Grafton engaged Red Rooster Group to upgrade its overall brand image and improve its communications, giving their internal newsletter an upgrade was a part of the process.

The newsletter, addressed to Grafton’s 300 employees, describes the news at the organization’s three locations. Each of the locations were allocated a spread in the publication, establishing a format for each venue to collect news to share with all the employees. The newsletter helps all employees to feel connected to the organization, fosters a better understanding of Grafton’s services, and boost morale.

Brand Architecture

Our research uncovered that one of Grafton’s strengths, the specialized expertise and dedication of its staff, was not being conveyed. We shortened the official name of Grafton School to Grafton and established a brand hierarchy to unify the organization’s four locations under one brand name.

Brand Manual

We created a brand manual to explain the brand – what the organization stands for — and specifies colors, typefaces, graphics  and guidelines for the brand. This has allowed the client manage their own brand effectively.

Website

After a strategic assessment of competitors and the users, we redesigned the website around the needs of the users. The redesign has been receiving rave reviews. grafton.org

Display

A flexible system of interchangeable panels helps make their display adaptable for fairs, attracting potential students and employees.

Links

• See more examples of nonprofit branding.
• Contact Red Rooster Group for help branding and design for your nonprofit organization.

How do  you create statewide visibility to showcase your good work and help drive donations? We launched this full color magazine by combining the resources of several of the organization’s newsletters. The magazine features stories on the land that the group is preserving, as well as its volunteers, and a column by the director. In an example of effective nonprofit publication design, we created the center spread as a pull out that people could use to visit the specific sites that the organization was protecting. The magazine helped to increase donations an won an award of the best nonprofit publication.

Links

• See other publications.
• Read about Red Rooster Group’s commitment to the environment.
• Contact Red Rooster Group.

Challenge

We had been working with Seedco for several years on various projects when they approached us about their policy reports. It was a relatively new area for them and they wanted to leverage their experience in workforce development, poverty and housing to establish a national voice on policy related to those issues. They had formed a small policy department and had produced a few reports. Each report had a different look, and compared with the documents produced by leading think tanks, they lacked a level of sophistication that would establish credibility with legislators.

Solution

We set out to develop an overall format that they could use for all the reports. One of the challenges was that the topics were very different, and the length and types of charts varied with each report. Another issue was the fact that the reports covered issues from a high level perspective, and so using photos of specific cases would not represent the scope of the inquiry.

Our solution addressed all these needs.

1. Adaptable Cover Design. We created a handsome design for the covers that could accommodate different types of photos, from abstract to specific. Use of straight and angled lines present a sophisticated sensibility that unifies the reports while subtly reinforcing the shapes in Seedco’s logo. The background color of each cover changes to coordinate with the subject and photo being used while the overall palette fits with Seedco’s image.

2. Clear Headline System. We developed a 2 line headline system that includes a tag identifying the issue being covered (i.e. career advancement, workforce development), as well as a catchy headline for the report. The date and issuer (Seedco) is made very clear on the cover to acclimate the reader to the timeliness and perspective being offered.

3. Flexible Interior Format. We met the requirements the interior as well.  We created a two column format with a margin for callouts or charts. So far, three reports have been produced successfully using this design — each with totally different content. One had a few bar graphs and lots of footnotes, one had maps and case studies, and the third had an abundance of different size charts.

Result

Seedco’s reports are now professional and consistent, clearly communicating the message, and helping to build their credibility as a voice to be taken seriously by policy makers.

Reports

A Tale of Two Systems: Linking Economic Development and Workforce Development

Initiatives aimed at linking economic development and workforce development have emerged across the country. In the coming years, initiatives are expected to multiply as part of national economic recovery and reinvestment efforts. In this report, the Seedco Policy Center analyzes such efforts in three states to detail opportunities and pitfalls encountered by linking the two systems.

Career Advancement

Publicly-funded workforce development policy has shifted the majority of resources over the past decade to helping disadvantaged job seekers find and keep jobs. Seedco offers a new report, examining the preliminary lessons from its career advancement pilot, EarnMore, which leverages existing public funding streams to create a client-focused and scalable model.

Links

• See other Seedco project: Promoting a Policy Report Briefing
• See other Seedco project: Career Guide Engages Teens
• See other Seedco project: Earnmore Materials Promote Career Advancement
• See other publications.
• Contact Red Rooster Group for help with your publication.

Challenge

In an economically rough year, Student Advocacy needed to demonstrate its financial responsibility. Given that its annual report was one of the few mailings it does in the course of the year, it still needed to use this a vehicle for fundraising.

Solution

For this nonprofit annual report, we focused the design on the stories of four students who were experiencing very difficult situations and who Student Advocacy was able to help. Lacking good photos of the students, we used illustrations to heighten the emotional drama of the stories. To keep printing costs down, we used a format that was smaller than standard size and printed the report in only two colors.

Results

This successful example demonstrating that nonprofit design does not have to be costly to be successful, we were able to produce a the publication within their budget and still tell their story. In fact, Student Advocacy received comments from donors who had noticed the stories even more than they had in previous year’s annual reports.

We are in our fifth year of helping Student Advocacy generate awareness and donors through their publications and fundraising events.

Links

• See how we developed Student Advocacy’s brand.
• See other nonprofit publications.
• Contact us about your annual report or publication design.

Red Rooster Group is a New York based graphic design firm that creates effective brands, websites and marketing campaigns for nonprofits to increase their visibility, fundraising and communications effectiveness. Contact us at info@redroostergroup.com.

CHALLENGE

Seedco, a national nonprofit organization helps connect lower income people with jobs training skills using a network of neighborhood career counseling centers. They have achieved success with this model and wanted a guide to explain how other groups can emulate this success.

SOLUTION

As an example of a successful nonprofit publication design, this guide describes Seedco’ model and gives examples of case studies. We used illustrations and hand-drawn type for the chapter openings to give this community development guide a friendly feel and distinguish it from government documents and policy reports.

RESULTS

The easy-to-read guide was extremely well received and helped Seedco communicate its message and distinguish itself from other community-based workforce development organizations with a friendly design.

LINKS

• See other Seedco projects.

This newsletter for this program to prevent domestic violence was distributed through the 25 chapters of this national Jewish nonprofit organization.

Links

• See more publications.
• See how we promote other Jewish organizations.
• Contact Red Rooster Group about promoting your organization.

We handled the design of the annual course catalog for the World Trade Institute, an educational institution, featuring a listing of all courses, special programs, and registration information and form.

Links

• See more publications.
• See business marketing case studies.
• Contact Red Rooster Group about promoting your organization.

Red Rooster Group is a New York based graphic design firm that creates effective brands, websites, and marketing campaigns to increase your visibility, sales, and communications effectiveness. Contact us at info@redroostergroup.com.