Client Overview
The Gender Justice Fund (GJF), formerly known as the New Century Trust for over a century, is a Philadelphia-based philanthropic organization dedicated to advancing gender equity by resourcing movements, fostering partnerships, and catalyzing systemic transformation. This change is the result of years of evolution within the organization, deep thinking, and planning among the board. As they embarked on a critical organizational evolution, they sought to modernize their brand identity to better reflect their deepened commitment to intersectional feminism, racial justice, and LGBTQIA+ liberation.
Recognizing the need for a visual and digital identity that would align with their redefined mission and values, Gender Justice Fund engaged Creative Repute, an award-winning design agency, to spearhead their comprehensive rebrand and website redesign.
The Challenge
When Gender Justice Fund approached Creative Repute, they were facing a multi-layered challenge. Their brand assets—including their logo, style guide, website, merchandise, and collateral—reflected an outdated philanthropic model that no longer aligned with their focus on systemic, cultural change.
Additionally, their existing website, built on Wix, presented both visual and functional limitations. The platform’s constraints were impeding their ability to scale content, integrate CRM tools, and deliver a user-friendly experience for diverse audiences, including grantees, funders, and grassroots partners. It was clear that a strategic design intervention was necessary—not just to beautify their presence, but to create tools that empowered internal management and deepened external engagement.
Gender Justice Fund needed an ecosystem that was professional, accessible, and above all, sustainable for their small team. The transition to Squarespace was crucial, but a custom strategy was needed to transcend Squarespace’s templated feel and build a bespoke experience without heavy technical maintenance requirements.
Our Approach
Brand Discovery and Visual Identity Creation
Creative Repute initiated the project with an in-depth brand discovery phase, combining stakeholder interviews, visual audits, and competitive analysis within the gender justice sector. We synthesized findings into a moodboard system that mapped aesthetic directions onto GJF’s organizational values: liberation, boldness, empathy, and rigor.
From a technical standpoint, we prototyped logo concepts using a combination of vector-based illustration techniques in Adobe Illustrator and iterative wireframing in Figma to rapidly test cohesion across applications. The final mark was a half-circular emblem formed through interlocking abstract shapes, symbolizing interconnected struggles and collective action—a subtle nod to community organizing. The logo’s geometry balanced dynamic movement with a rooted center, reinforcing Gender Justice Fund’s dual commitment to grassroots and systemic work.
Typography was selected with accessibility at the forefront. We combined Montserrat for headers—known for its open forms and strong x-height—with Source Sans Pro for body text to ensure legibility across web and print. Color palettes were stress-tested across WCAG 2.1 accessibility guidelines to meet contrast minimums, ensuring brand equity for users with visual impairments. The final palette blended rich plum tones with vibrant mint and steady charcoal gray, reflecting both vibrancy and grounded professionalism.
A multi-page brand guidelines document (over 30 pages) was delivered, detailing logo usage, color specifications in HEX/RGB/CMYK formats, accessibility parameters, approved photography styles, iconography systems, and recommended voice and tone considerations for written content.
Website Design and Development
Building on the new visual language, we tackled the website redevelopment. Squarespace was selected as the CMS for its intuitive backend, strong security features, and built-in SEO optimization tools. However, we customized beyond standard templates to meet GJF’s needs for both form and function.
We began by mapping out a user journey using flowcharts and wireframes, strategically structuring the site’s information architecture to prioritize clarity and action. Accessibility best practices were embedded from the outset, including ARIA-labeling for screen readers, keyboard navigability, and alt-text protocols.
The final site design featured clean, minimalist layouts with wide margins and modular grids. Custom code injections were employed to modify navigation behaviors, including a sticky header with dropdown logic and a conditional footer that adjusted based on page depth.
Key integrations included:
- A Mailchimp API connection for seamless newsletter subscription management.
- Social sharing optimization with Open Graph and Twitter (X) Card metadata.
- A flexible, tag-based grant archive system allowing the GJF team to dynamically organize past funding initiatives without developer intervention.
Before handing over the site, we created a custom instructional manual featuring annotated screenshots and hosted two live training sessions to ensure full technical transfer to the client’s team.
Marketing Collateral and Ongoing Campaigns
Beyond the website, Creative Repute continued to design critical outreach materials that extended the brand into everyday use. We developed a series of social media templates designed in Canva Pro, allowing GJF to easily plug and play content for campaigns like Masc Ally Month—an initiative focused on uplifting masculine-presenting individuals who advocate for gender justice.This became evergreen templates that have been used time and time again with slight adjustment by the GJF team for years.
We also designed a suite of email newsletter templates in Mailchimp, utilizing modular content blocks that maintained visual consistency while offering flexibility. Each email template was responsive and tested against a suite of mobile and desktop email clients to ensure fidelity across devices.
A notable campaign, initiated by the client to highlight a range of gender justice and social justice issues, featured an art poster series. As part of this initiative, the founder of Creative Repute contributed one of the designs, specifically focused on advocating for safe working conditions for sex workers. The posters used bold hand-made typographic interventions paired with expressive illustrations, making them highly effective assets for both street distribution and digital circulation.
Recognition and Press
The rebranding effort did not go unnoticed. Creative Repute’s work for Gender Justice Fund earned a Hermes Creative Award, a prestigious international recognition for excellence in concept, writing, and design. Moreover, the Gender Justice Fund’s relaunch and enhanced public presence were highlighted in Generocity Philadelphia’s feature article, bringing further validation to the success of the project.
Results
The rebranding and website redesign fundamentally repositioned Gender Justice Fund within the philanthropic and social justice ecosystems. The GJF staff felt genuinely empowered to manage their digital and marketing tools independently, with minimal reliance on external vendors—a testament to the intentional UX, CMS, and training strategies Creative Repute embedded from the project’s inception.
Gender Justice Fund has since rehired Creative Repute multiple times for additional design work for advocacy initiatives, event promotions, and new engagement campaigns.
Project Summary
- Client: Colored Convos Media (Jenn M. Jackson and Daren W. Jackson)
- Services: Brand Identity, Website Design & Development, Collateral Design, Campaign Materials, Social Media Templates, Newsletter Templates, Art Poster, Tutorials
- Platform: Custom-designed Squarespace CMS
- Tools Used: Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, WordPress CMS, Elementor Pro, WooCommerce, Stripe API, PayPal API, CashApp Integration, Mailchimp API
- Awards: Hermes Creative Award Winner – GOLD
- Featured In: Generocity Philadelphia
