We are thrilled to announce that our latest non-profit web design project has picked up top honors at the Interactive Media Awards (IMA). The NewSchools Venture Fund website won the coveted IMA Best in Class Award with an overall score of 484 (out of a possible 500) in the ‘Nonprofit’ category. The Best in Class award is the highest honor bestowed by the Interactive Media Awards. It represents the very best in planning, execution and overall professionalism.

How The Judges Rated The Site

• Design: 96/100
• Content: 97/100
• Feature Functionality: 100/100
• Usability: 93/100
• Standards Compliance & Cross-Browser Compatibility: 98/100

Total: 484

Congratulations to Iron Design Director Alice Bybee for, well, the design! Additional kudos to Sam Evans for his Standards Compliant coding prowess. Respect!

Find out more about the NewSchools project.

The toolworks.org website launch completes our rebrand for Toolworks, a self-supporting nonprofit that is devoted to helping people with disabilities connect with the opportunities in their community. After redesigning their identity and stationery system, we created templates for their day to day operational needs, brand guidelines and began work on bringing their brand to life through their website.

With a stream-lined site structure and media-rich content, the new website enables Toolworks to spotlight their client success stories. Our strong attention to accessibility ensures past, present and future clients and supporters will also be able to navigate the site with ease. We built the site on top of WordPress, an easy to use content management system, to allow Toolworks the flexibility to maintain the website themselves, with support from Iron when needed.

The new website allows Toolworks to focus on running and promoting the social ventures that allow them to provide social services to over 500 individuals with disabilities every year. Their latest endeavor, Bakeworks, was featured on Huffington Post San Francisco.

Patelco, one of the country’s largest credit unions and a long time client of ours, celebrated their SF branch grand re-opening last Wednesday and an early morning line of 100+ people eagerly waited to get a look at the brand new interior. Or maybe they were there to collect the $75 being awarded to the first 75 people through the doors. This was just one of the offers we cooked up this summer to promote the branch and its move.

At the end of July, Patelco closed their current SF main branch doors and moved on up the street to 124 Second. With this new branch location opening just 75 yards away from the old, the goal was to make existing members aware of the move, so daily banking routines weren’t disrupted, as well as bring in potential members.

In July, we targeted existing members with a direct mail flyer notifying them of the branch move and promoting the “First 75 in, take $75 out” offer with a QR code. Upon scanning the code, members were taken to the sitelet we developed earlier in the year for the Patelco Pays Your Way campaign. And a pop up prompted visitors to enter their information to receive a voucher and chance to win the $75. Additionally, visitors had the opportunity to take a look around and learn how Patelco celebrated their anniversary by giving back to the community.

We also created a series of bold, eye-catching posters for the new branch windows directing anyone passing by to visit the site. All patelcopays.org visitors during the promotional period, not just current members, were eligible to redeem the voucher.

For international brands it can be a challenge to introduce themselves to new and unfamiliar markets. A new market often demands a new perspective on the brand – a new take on what is being offered or how it is being presented, based on what people respond to in that particular region.

Take Bticino – an extremely large Italian manufacturer of high-end light switches, wall plates and other electrical device peripherals – as an example. They contacted Iron in 2009, as they began the process of introducing their products to the US market. Given the brand’s prominence in Europe, the company had plenty of experience framing its message of sophistication in different languages – but where the company was struggling was translating their VISUAL language. While European countries can often share an aesthetic sensibility, the US is isolated from that cultural network. In short, to customers in the US, Bticino’s marketing materials seemed strange rather than sophisticated.

Over the course of a year, we set about translating Bticino’s message of sophistication both literally and visually, redesigning the company’s website, brochure, catalog, print ads and every other consumer touch point (see a small sample of our work below). With a cohesive marketing arsenal, the company has been able to expand target market saturation from San Francisco to Los Angeles and is in the planning stages of opening an office in New York. We’re excited about how the work turned out and are looking forward to our next international challenge!

NewSchools Venture Fund is a nonprofit venture philanthropy firm working to transform public education for low-income children. Our challenge was to build a digital presence that would stand tall among Silicon Valley audiences and reflect the innovation and transformative results for which they are known. The site needed to portray the true face of NewSchools and tell a narrative to potential entrepreneurs, funders and the thousands that will visit. The new site has an integrated array of features including a blog, picture galleries, videos and other key resources. You’ll also find case studies of the great work NewSchools ventures have done.

As part of our commitment to working with companies dedicated to social good, we recently launched a new brand identity for local start-up Genability. Genability is focused on making electricity usage more elastic, distributed, renewable and clean. They are currently building the world’s most complete and accurate database of energy prices, as well as the next generation of cloud services for managing, forecasting and optimizing energy.

The logo we developed explores the use of Fibonacci spirals and kinetic energy. We wanted the mark to create a sense of motion and energy to represent the give and take of the network Genability will build.

To learn more about Genability, visit www.genability.com

How do you thank the communities and people who have supported your business for the past 75 years? How about with some groceries, gas, coffee and lunch… all for FREE! Patelco is celebrating their 75th anniversary and this is how we’re helping them to say “thank you”.

Yesterday, Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors, and Patelco Credit Union executives, kicked off the Patelco Pays Your Way campaign by visiting Lucky Supermarkets in Oakland. The team personally handed out $75 Lucky gift cards to 75 lucky grocery shoppers. This was the first in a series of Patelco Pays your Way events that we’ve helped coordinate.

Patelco Pays Your Way events will continue every Monday through Friday between March 15 and April 15 with Patelco representatives popping up at select Lucky Supermarkets, ARCO stations, Tully’s Coffee, Jamba Juice, and Panera Bread locations throughout the Bay Area.

In addition to helping individuals cover the cost of every-day purchases, Patelco is also offering more than $40,000 worth of prizes to its memebers as well as a chance for members and non-members to win $50,000 with one toss of a cupcake.

To find out where the Patelco Pays Your Way team may strike next, visit www.patelcopays.org

With over 350,000 apps in the Apple Store, we thought it was high time we joined the mobile revolution. As part of a complete naming, strategy and branding project, we are thrilled to announce the launch of Zipongo for iPhone.

Zipongo is a fun, interactive game with tools for tracking, sharing and exploring new foods, activities and even your sleep habits. The app, and asociated web site, use game theory to engage users and incentivize healthier lifestyle choices. Let the revolution continue!

This month we launched a new brand identity for Toolworks – a nonprofit organization that creates social and economic opportunities for people with disabilities. Our objective was to refresh the overall look and feel of the brand – from the group’s printed materials to its web presence.

In order to develop the new creative we helped reposition the organization, developing a fully-fledged strategic brief. The goal of the creative became to embody the new strategy, while capturing Toolworks’ unconventional spirit and uninhibited commitment to getting the job done. As such, the visual language we developed needed to reference the organization’s boldness and passion while presenting a unique, modern front.

Simple, elegant, san serif typography is treated with a progressive color palette and the interlocking double “O” motif suggest cooperation, strength and partnership. All key tenets of the brand strategy. The web site is under development and we’ll follow up with news of its launch in the coming months.

When the The First Tee of San Francisco approached us, they had a unique challenge. They needed donations from individual donors and corporations to keep their program running, yet they had no official fundraising program, and no way to recognize the people who support them financially.

After launching into a brand strategy overhaul, we quickly designed event invites and new membership materials, as well a series of email newsletters. The result? The consistent, sophisticated branding led to increased First Tee Club membership and a staggering 2000% ROI following the first mailing of the membership brochure. They now have the tools they need to pursue funding and to recognize and maintain contact with those that provide invaluable financial support. Check out their program and help keep kids out of the rough.