Understood.org is a non-profit dedicated to serving the 70 million people in the United States who learn and think differently. In 2019, the org shifted its strategic direction and built a Marketing and Brand team from the ground up. I was brought in specifically to lead the rebrand, and stayed to build the creative infrastructure that would make it last.

Accessibility as a design brief.

Working closely with brand agency Wolff-Olins, we developed a visual and verbal identity around a single idea: shaping the world for difference. Accessibility wasn’t a constraint we designed around; it was the creative brief.

The new typeface, developed with type foundry Display, was customised to improve readability for people with dyslexia, with letterforms and numerals made more distinguishable for neurodiverse readers.

The logo is a unique signature and acts as a visual anchor to all brand communications. It’s constructed to represent the idea of shaping the world for difference. The organic shape emerging from behind the conventional “U” negative shape in the center represents that we all experience the world differently.

To complete our visual look, we collaborated with illustrator Ka Young Lee, who built an illustration system to reflect genuine diversity — all types of people, in all environments. Every element, including dark mode compatibility, was considered from the start rather than retrofitted.

Every element, including dark mode compatibility, was considered from the start rather than retrofitted.

The Brand Matrix

Once the brand foundation was set, the harder problem began: how do we maintain creative coherence across a large organisation with multiple teams, audiences, and channels, all producing content simultaneously?

The answer was the Brand Matrix: a framework I co-developed with my creative partner, Bill Novak, using an x/y-axis to map content type against tone, creating distinct brand territories for different audiences and contexts. It gave teams across product, social, editorial, PR, and external communications a shared decision-making tool, enabling them to produce diverse content while staying within the same brand world. It simplified creative decisions, reduced inconsistency, and scaled across the organisation without sacrificing quality.

Sulmultaniously I was building Understood’s in-house creative studio from scratch, hiring and leading a team of designers and art directors, growing and establishing fully accessible brand standards.

Social media launch

Since the rebrand in 2021, we’ve grown our social footprint across six platforms to nearly 1M followers organically.

Website before & after

CREDITS

Client: Understood.org
Branding Agency: Wolf Ollins
Illustrator: Ka Young Lee
My role: Creative direction, art direction, creative & design team lead, brand development, strategy, and recruiting.