CASE STUDY 04 //
Strides Toronto
Strides is a multi-service agency that addresses the needs of children, youth, their parents, and families. Located in east Toronto, they serve the communities of East York and Scarborough. They aim to build strength and resilience in infants, children, youth, and their families through equitable, accessible, client-driven services, system leadership, and advocacy.
CAMPAIGNS
LOGOS
SOCIAL MEDIA GRAPHICS
WEBSITES
Black Excellence Community Library Website
THE GOAL //
The Anti-black Racism (ABR) Taskforce, composed of black Strides staff members, gathered resources for children, youth, families, and caregivers to share, celebrate, and understand black heritage and culture. Initially this was presented as a Google Slides document resembling a Google Classroom, but they wanted to expand this resource into a website so it could reach a wider audience. It needed to capture the library experience, while ensuring it remained easy to navigate and accessible website.
OUR SOLUTION //
An homage to black heritage.
We created a warm and inviting library website, one that is engaging and a pleasure to navigate. It is bright, impactful, and visually highlights black culture and heritage through the prints and colours used in each of the library rooms. It gives off the feeling of a library, through its organization and illustration elements. We’ve incorporated a redundant navigation on the homepage, that's styled as a floor plan to give users an overview of everything available to them and to mimic the experience of entering a new building for the first time. We used the illustrations of librarians to help guide visitors through the content, by having them highlight various resources, commenting a word or two about the book or video. Additionally, we included illustrations of patrons throughout, showing a diversity of people, in the hopes that visitors will see themselves reflected on the page.
THE PROCESS //
Collaboration and trust.
In our initial meeting, the ABR Taskforce guided us through the original Google Slides library, highlighting its meaningful imagery and diverse characters they had included. Throughout the process, we worked closely with the client to ensure our creation aligned with their vision and was culturally appropriate. We included illustrations to make the site visually engaging and to honour the original document. We partnered with a talented black illustrator, Jaida Salmon to bring the library characters to life. We used colours from African prints as our foundation and incorporated different patterns in each room. Knowing the client would add resources themselves, we developed an intuitive back-end system for easy updates.
SUCCESS //
Award winning.
In the words of our client: “This repository of books, videos, movies, essays, poems, inventions, highlights the historical achievements and accomplishments, as well as the fight and struggle of people of African descent.” We proudly submitted this project to the RGD Branding Awards and won in the "Element" category. Read more about it on our blog.
