Innovation in the Non-Profit Sector: East Durham Children’s Initiative
The Company:
East Durham Children’s Initiative (EDCI) is a non-profit organization located in Durham, North Carolina. For families living in a 120-block area in East Durham, EDCI provides a myriad of high-quality services and programs beginning from birth and leading up until high school. They make a point to focus on the health of the whole family, not just the child, which directly strengthens the schools and the community in Durham. EDCI works with community members and partner organizations to develop and coordinate new and existing services to best meet the needs of approximately 3,000 children and youth living in the zone. A significant part of the organization involves what they call their pipeline. Working to provide a continuum of high-quality programs and services make up EDCI’s pipeline. The pipeline offers development services for early childhood, elementary, middle and high school as well as community building and programs/services for family, social and health.
The Situation:
EDCI needed new branding and a website that was easy to navigate, It needed to be visually appealing and reflect who they were accurately: A fun, bright and informative organization that is focused on helping the youth and their families of Durham.
The Solution:
Smashing Boxes dove right into working at first on the logo. Creative director Brian Fischer stated that “the logo blended vibrant, cultural specific colors, with exciting shapes to make a mark that works well across all mediums. The final logo makes a bold statement.”
Once that was created, the website redesign began. Smashing Boxes presented the pipeline in a clear and concise manner. “When designing the Pipeline, we wanted a page that was completely unique to the site as a whole. We took the literal sense of the term and applied it as a way to travel each stage of the EDCI pipeline,” said Smashing Boxes designer, Jonathan Stephens. The use of bright colors reflects the new branding and makes the website, especially the pipeline, easy to navigate.
The Conclusion:
Since the completion of the logo and website, EDCI has received positive feedback on the changes. It was refreshing to help out a local non-profit and we continue to stay engaged with EDCI to see how their work is affecting Durham. We are proud of the work they are doing and look forward to seeing progress in the community in the future.