City’s First Readers
City’s First Readers is a group of nonprofits that offer programs and activities for families with children from birth to age 5.
Web Design | Digital Design | Print Design | Branding
Background
City’s First Readers was formed through the New York City Councils Early Literacy Initiative with the goal of providing early literacy resources to children in low income neighborhoods.
To support this work, City’s First Readers was in need of a website that allowed parents/caregivers to easily search for programs and activities their child may need. Other needs of the website included tools and features for increased engagement, and easy pathways for parents/caregivers to learn more about CFR partners.
The Challenge
The City’s First Readers (CFR) website only featured a calendar which included events sourced predominately from local library branches. While this allowed parents and families to locate local events in their neighborhood, it did not provide further information about the resources, activities, and programming offered by the 17 CFR partners. To address this, the website was redesigned to feature an interactive search bar, modeled after fill-in-the-blank. The search bar would allow families to locate activities offered by the CFR partners.
search Results
Results appear in a detailed card design, which families can then expand and learn more about each CFR partner’s offerings.
Visual Design
As mentioned earlier, the original City’s First Readers website was only a calendar page with limited detail. The branding also was limited, with simply the CFR logo and two brand colors (blue and orange). It was important that the updated website’s visual design was more child friendly and inclusive/representative of NYC. To address these needs, a third color (yellow) was introduced to brighten and warm the palette. Secondly, a set of character illustrations were introduced. These illustrations can be seen on each website page, they feature a parent/caregiver with a child paired with a backdrop of a typical NYC scene. Lastly, the pattern on each website page also includes elements of NYC, such as street signs (ex: one way).
This brand refresh can be seen throughout the campaign materials below as well.
Campaign Materials
Seasonally, CFR would promote a “CFR Week,” where each partner organization would increase engagement with the families they serve to drive new families to the website. Materials produced for this engagement included flyers, activity sheets for children, bookmarks, social media posts, and more.
Digital Coloring Feature
With the success of the coloring sheets during CFR week, a digital coloring feature was introduced onto the CFR website. With this addition, children can color directly on their ipads and computer or they can browse the library of sheets to download and print at home.