SHIFTING THE NARRATIVE
- Matt Drochelman
- Aug 11
- 2 min read
Updated: 7 days ago
Aligning & redesigning the Ready Readers website for their mission
Ready Readers is on a mission to bring literacy to the St. Louis Metro area. Their Storytime Program reaches over 1300 classrooms each year so that kiddos develop the pre-literacy skills necessary to be ready to read when the time comes. And because books in the home is a strong predictor of reading success, those Storytime books (carefully curated to feature diverse characters reflective of the children they serve) become the building books of the students' home libraries.
The above paragraph doesn’t even fully encompass all that they do (we just needed to keep this thing moving), so you can understand the desire for a website that reflects their impact and clearly informs program participants, stakeholders and donors.
Thus, they tapped us on the shoulder for a website redesign.
Ready Readers had many concerns about the first edition. They found it difficult to navigate like a book without a table of contents. Their organization, now operating for over 25 years, had evolved. And as their programs expanded, odds and ends found themselves tacked onto the original architecture, resulting in tangential messages rather than a cohesive narrative.
Long story short, this nonprofit offering a world of opportunity worried their website had gotten too cumbersome, sacrificing comprehension and approachability.
So we started with a sitemap. Like a novelist outlining the world’s most predictable thriller, we worked with RR to determine which messages go where and what sections go when, so that every twist and turn was as untwisty and unturny as possible for their visitors.
All essential information now rests a click or two away, rather than buried beneath a bundle of buttons and pages.
After the sitemap, we transitioned to the wireframe where our focus shifted from site flow to page flow. This gray and granular step provided the ability to move elements to the client’s liking without disrupting the tectonic plates of the gorgeous graphical elements to come.
With both the sitemap and wireframe in place to create a solid foundation, it was time to make this thing look pretty. We added illustrations in line with the storybook theme and fleshed out a new logo mark—simplifying the increasingly erudite worm, “Booker.”
Then, with some helpful assets from RR, we brought video to the homepage and other key areas of the site. Throw in additional hoverstates, dropdown menus and refreshed copy, and this website was—as you say—in the books.
"So much more goes into redesigning a website than we imagined. Darling offered everything we needed and more: incredible project management, copywriting that helped our story shine, and technical and creative expertise at every stage of the process. Most of all, we valued the peace of mind that comes with working alongside such a reliable creative team." —Erin Fisher, Ready Readers Marketing Coordinator
With the site up, we’re excited to see how it improves Ready Readers’ user experience as visitors interact with the interface. We encourage you to have a look for yourself. And maybe, if you feel so led, to consider getting involved with this worthy cause.