Deliverables
Research Reports
Infographics
Social Media Graphics
Campaign Design
Development Materials
Logo Refresh
Location
New York, NY
Dance/NYC seeks to promote and allocate funding for dance in the cultural capital of the United States. For nearly a decade, they have trusted Monroe&Co to design research reports, brand standards, fundraising and conference materials, and other assets needed to carry out their advocacy work.
Research Reports
The organization continually seeks to make its materials more accessible. Using guidelines from the American Printing House for the Blind (APH), we developed a new report format that incorporates accessibility features such as high contrast, minimum type sizes, and simplified graphs/charts that do not rely solely on color to understand key takeaways. The PDF version of all reports include descriptive alt text for charts and are also structured in the simplest way for screen readers to dictate. This meant layouts needed to be simplified to follow a continuous stream, instead of having complex layouts with text boxes jumping around the page that might be read out of order.
sample pages
View all the Dance/NYC research reports here >
Social Media Graphics
To drive their constituents to download and read the research reports, social media graphics are always created with highlights and key findings from each research project.
Artists Are Necessary Workers Campaign
When the pandemic and a drop in tax revenue threatened Arts funding in New York City, Dance/NYC mobilized their community to lobby government officials and the Mayor’s Office. The campaign (and others by city Arts orgs) helped to secure a $25million commitment to the next year’s budget.
Symposium Materials
For 10 years, we’ve created digital ad banners, event programs, video screens and other day-of graphics for the annual Dance/NYC Symposium, a convening of dance makers, arts administrators, and artists to discuss the future of the profession in New York City. When the pandemic changed everything, we created on-air graphics for use in livestream software.
Logo & Stationery
In 2013, Dance/NYC approached us with a unique challenge; their logo couldn’t be completely changed due to complicated approvals from a parent organization and a nonprofit board needing to approve wholesale rebrandings. Luckily, this is something we’ve heard from many nonprofits and are well-versed in working around!
Brand Color Palette
In 2016, the organization was doing a push to make more of its materials accessible to folks with various vision impairments and generally more accessible. Using guidelines from the American Printing House for the Blind (APH) as well as Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), we developed a new color palette that would honor the organizations past while giving us more options for upcoming initiatives, focus areas.
Another goal with the new palette was to have the ability to create beautiful designs with more depth and movement. All of the brand colors can be combined with one other to create lovely tone-on-tone gradients.
Development Materials
Since 2014, New Yorkers for Dance has been 1) an awareness campaign and 2) a container for fundraising. Print invitations, outer envelopes, and rsvp cards have all been designed and printed.
Website homepage redesign
As Dance/NYC’s programs, research, and outreach grew over the years, the homepage had become hard to navigate through their most frequently requested items. Using data from Google Analytics and requests from staff and their audience, we reworked the homepage to showcase their most important offerings.
Result
The results of consistent, high-quality design have done wonders for Dance/NYC in their field. Originally a member organization mostly offering discounts on dance shoes, they are now a major player in bringing together their community to advocate for greater investment in the Arts.
James is a talented designer and great to work with——very amenable to some pretty strict creative demands and smart about budget constraints.”
— Frmr Executive Director, Dance/NYC —
Credits:
Design: Monroe&Co
Photos: Dance/NYC & members
