RSM Foundation
The RSM Foundation offers free, teen-led mentorship programming for students grades 2-5. Their goal is to inspire a love of math in every student and connect youth to positive high school role models.
Deliverables:
Mood Board Collaboration
Website Content Strategy
Squarespace Website Redesign (7 pages plus a “Stories” blog)
SEO and Third Party Integrations
Custom Graphics + Image Asset Creation
The RSM Foundation offers free, teen-led mentorship programming for students grades 2-5. Their goal is to inspire a love of math in every student and connect youth to positive high school role models.
This project was an exciting collaboration with Bachmeyer Press who uses an anthropological approach to create story-driven content. The founder of Bachmeyer Press, Katie Bachmeyer, took the lead on honing in on the RSM Foundation’s values, keywords, and written content, and she even conducting several interviews with past students, parents, and teachers. The goal of this website redesign was to tell these stories and share the impact of the RSM Foundation in a way that was intuitive, fun, and informative since the old website lacked the clarity and human element that they wanted to convey with their audience (teenage students and parents of younger students).
After Katie finished conducting the initial research and defined the primary site objectives, target audience, pain points, and keywords. She identified that they were ultimately looking for a website that clearly defined the programs they offered and sparked a conversation:
“A website that Parents, Thought Leaders, Principals, and Students will visit and get Inspired by about how RSM is Disrupting the Stereotype and Tapping Potential so that ultimately they will want to Spark a Conversation.”
And that’s where I came in. The RSM Foundation already had logos, fonts, and a color palette to work with, so the first step in the design process was a mood board collaboration to help us hone in on a new visual aesthetic for the website. This included not only sourcing a cache of stock photos that we would be able to select from later on, but it also involved the creation of three distinct visual directions in the form of home page wireframes.
The RSM Foundation team ended up selecting this mood board concept that felt bright, bold, and energizing. We wanted the site to feel youthful without feeling immature so we decided to move forward with sketch-like illustrations with vibrant offset color blocks, rounded corners for buttons and images, bright saturated imagery and bold color blocks, and monochromatic blue and green banner-width background images that felt modern and innovative.
Then I dove into the Squarespace website build! The site consists of 7 pages as well as a full blog containing the story interviews Katie conducted earlier in the project. These stories were an integral part of the new site, so it was important that we wove those quotes and testimonials throughout the site. We also wanted to guide users through the different offerings and programs with the use of anchor links and an intuitive user experience.
It was such a joy collaborating with the RSM Foundation and Bachmeyer Press on this project, and we couldn’t be more excited with how the final website turned out! Take a look here to view the RSM Foundation’s brand new site. And check out Bachmeyer Press’ website here to learn more about their story-driven approach.
Want to learn more about working together?
Tell me a bit about your project and we can schedule your free 30 minute consultation!