ColorLines
A Platform for News at the Pace of Race
Founded in 1998 by the Applied Research Center, ColorLines is a progressive national publication focused on racial justice with investigative reports, essays, and opinion columns that spark candid conversations about rights and equality.
Challenge
After twelve years as a print magazine, ColorLines wanted to relaunch as an online community, while retaining the audience they garnered for their RaceWire blog. After discussing strategy and researching their readership, we recommended they merge the blog with the ColorLines brand. Reinforcing the shared goals of both publications was paramount to bringing their readership together in a cohesive experience.
Our challenge was to design a new look and feel that addressed the constraints and opportunities of publishing online, while matching the calibre of journalism that ColorLines produces.
Solution
We encouraged ColorLines to look beyond their existing site limitations and think about what they needed to produce the best online journalism, given realistic publishing timelines and staffing. In branding discussions, we talked about whether ColorLines wanted to be seen as a safe place for most people, or a catapult for action and discussion beyond the site. ColorLines was ready to take racial justice to the streets in a balanced, approachable way.
The strong, flexible architecture and bold visual design we created support both the immediate response to current events and in-depth investigation and analysis ColorLines offers.
After working with Mule, ColorLines reported a total site visitor increase of 44% and a pageview increase of 86% over the previous versions of ColorLines.com and RaceWire combined.
In 2011, ColorLines was selected as a Webby Award Official Honoree for Political Blog.