Building a digital platform for a global movement.
With a network spanning more than 75 Green Building Councils around the world, World Green Building Council is at the forefront of transforming the built environment to create a more sustainable future.
Thirty years after the first Green Building Council was established, the organisation had grown into a truly global movement. Its digital presence needed to evolve with it – providing a clearer expression of its ambition, making a wealth of knowledge and resources easier to access, and connecting councils, members and partners across the world.
We worked with WorldGBC to refresh its visual identity and create a new digital platform designed around the needs of its diverse global audience.
Understanding a global audience
With such a broad international reach, understanding who was using the website – and what they needed from it – was fundamental.
Working closely with the WorldGBC team, we explored its key audiences, from individual councils and members to partners and organisations across the wider built environment. These insights helped us rethink the structure of the site and develop user journeys that made it easier for different audiences to find relevant information, resources and opportunities to engage.
Wireframes were developed, tested and refined through user feedback, creating a digital experience that could accommodate an enormous breadth of content without feeling complicated.
A bolder expression of the brand
The new website also provided an opportunity to give WorldGBC’s visual identity greater confidence and impact.
Retaining the existing logo, we refreshed the wider brand language with stronger colours, clearer signposting and a more distinctive approach to typography, imagery and graphic elements.
The result is a visual system that feels bold, contemporary and international – helping WorldGBC communicate the scale and urgency of its mission while bringing greater consistency to the way the organisation presents itself online.
Video plays an important role throughout, bringing sustainability initiatives to life and allowing the people, places and projects behind the global movement to tell their own stories.
Making complex information feel simple
WorldGBC has an extraordinary depth of knowledge to share. The challenge was making that information easy to explore.
Rather than allowing the volume of content to dictate the experience, we designed a flexible suite of modules that could present complex information in clearer, more engaging ways.
Expandable content, intuitive interactions, maps and a bespoke iconography system help users navigate everything from global projects and initiatives to research, resources and key areas of information.
The result is a site that can communicate detail when it is needed, while remaining clean, accessible and easy to navigate.
Designed for a world on mobile
With around half of the site’s audience accessing it on mobile devices, performance was considered from the outset.
We took a mobile-first approach, carefully optimising video, imagery and graphics to create an experience that remained fast and engaging across different devices, locations and connection speeds.
Image compression, asset management and hosting were considered as part of the wider digital strategy, while training gave the WorldGBC team the knowledge to keep content optimised as the site continued to grow.
Connecting a worldwide network
For an organisation operating across continents, the website needed to make its global reach immediately understandable.
Interactive maps, clear iconography and a simplified approach to information help visitors explore WorldGBC’s international network and understand how individual councils, projects and initiatives form part of a much bigger movement.
The result is a more confident and accessible digital home for WorldGBC – one that reflects the scale of the organisation today while giving its team the flexibility to communicate, educate and inspire as the movement continues to grow.
