THE MOUNTAINEERS
Brand Redesign
About the Mountaineers…
The Mountaineer's is a PNW-based non-profit with over 1000 volunteers, founded in 1906 for outdoor exploration and advocacy. Their goal is to encourage outdoor recreation and conservation, particularly among younger generations. They primarily engage their PNW audience through a direct mailing newsletter. The current logo effectively conveys their alpine focus, and the website's blue and green color scheme represents their winter and hiking activities. However, the website's typographic hierarchy needs improvement and the brand overall could use a modern update.
Logo
For this iteration of the logo I chose a condensed bold san serif font to highlight the "extreme sport" side of the brand which includes their courses in skiing, trad climbing, open water rafting, etc... I designed the mountains to be less geometric and added the shadow to be more representative of actual mountains and make the logo feel less like a sport jacket brand and overall more approachable. Lastly, I added a line under the words to ultimately bring everything together.
Color Palette
The color palette I chose was inspired by the cooler tones of winter and a complimenting orange to highlight certain design aspects. These are ultimately brought together with the more neutral shades of black white and grey.
Typography
The use of a mostly bold san serif font such as Roboto Condensed throughout the logo and body test helps to convey a sense of strength— a feeling that comes with exploring the great outdoors. The slab serif for headers adds a bit of dimension and helps to make the type hierarchy more obvious.
Imagery
My chosen imagery is meant to focus on hardcore outdoor exploration. Ultimately curating the images and complimenting design aspects to fit well with my color pallet.
Low-Fi Mobile Flow
(Signing up for the Email newsletter)
I have decided to revamp the process of "subscribing to the email newsletter" as it is a crucial feature of The Mountaineers' website for communicating with their audience. Currently, this feature is not prominently displayed on the homepage and is buried at the bottom amidst a cluttered layout, leading many users to lose their way on the site and miss out on signing up. My aim in redesigning this mobile flow is to simplify the sign-up process and reduce user disorientation.
Mobile Interface Redesign
My main user task was signing up for The Mountaineers email newsletter. To simplify the process, I redesigned the homepage and implemented a floating bar in the bottom left corner that stays visible as the user scrolls. The "sign up" and "thank you/success" pop-up pages have similar designs to emphasize the Gestalt principle of similarity. The sign-up process takes place within a pop-up page, and after submitting the form, users are redirected to the previous page, reducing disorientation within the site.
