John Templeton Foundation

Inspiring Awe & Wonder

John Templeton Foundation Website and Mobile Design

Quick Overview

The Background

The John Templeton Foundation is a grant-making foundation that advances well-being through research that sits at the nexus of science and spirituality. JTF and Push10 have worked together for many years to continually evolve the Foundation’s identity and website to accurately translate the foundation’s mission and purpose for today’s modern audience.

templeton.org

Honoring the Founder’s Legacy

We helped revitalize the Foundation’s written and visual brand, while continuing to honor JTF’s deep history.

Streamlining Operations

We rethought the user experience and information hierarchy of the grant application process to reduce unqualified grant applicants.

Promoting Discoveries

We helped JTF better highlight the work they fund in a public way using engaging storytelling across the site, and launching a new Templeton Ideas platform that helps achieve their goal of sparking curiosity.

01

Brand Strategy & Messaging

We started by interviewing board members and key stakeholders, reviewing existing research, and combing through past publications to understand the Foundation’s evolution so we could strategize a potential path forward. From there, we collaborated with the Foundation’s communications team to clarify and refine the organization’s core messaging, including the tagline, mission, vision, promise, and values.

Creating Moments of Awe

The Foundation’s tagline focuses on connecting the big questions to daily life — thus creating moments of awe and wonder. We used photography that shows the beauty of the natural world, while maintaining a sense of humanity throughout the brand.

02

A Bold New Aesthetic

Once we established the brand strategy and messaging, our next step was to design a new logo and visual style for the Foundation. We created flexible versions of the primary mark to adapt to a wide variety of situations, both in print and on-screen. Then, we extended the logo design into a comprehensive brand with a full set of collateral, including business cards, letterhead, envelopes, memo pads, name tags, podium signs, presentations, wall signs and more.

Templeton Foundation Collateral Design

Before and After

Our initial research revealed that the existing nautilus symbol had deep equity within the JTF community. While this ancient symbol has many interpretations, the inner spiral is a recognized symbol of creation, fluidity, and evolution. Our logo harnessed these associations while capturing the spirit of exploration that lives at the center of the Foundation.

Typography & Color

We chose a smart combination of serif and sans serif typefaces to simultaneously communicate the legacy of the Foundation while giving a nod to its commitment to modern scientific research and discovery.

 

Noe brings intelligence and modern sophistication to the brand’s primary headlines.

Proxima Nova combines humanistic proportions with a geometric appearance. This workhorse sans serif font helps create a clear information hierarchy.


Baskerville creates elegance in the brand’s long-form body copy while ensuring legibility.

03

A Sound Web Strategy

A detailed content strategy was essential to clarifying the Foundation’s message online. This perspective maximized usability and understanding for website visitors.

Who Will Be Visiting the Site, and Why?

Detailed user profiles helped us document and understand typical website visitors. Based on these audiences, we simplified the navigation to highlight Funding Areas, Grants, and Partnerships.

Content Strategy Considerations

To inform the content creation process, we conducted an iterative workshop that resulted in practical messaging guidelines. From voice & tone to content heuristics and business goals, we helped the communications team rally around one central content strategy.

04

Web Design

We extended the brand system onto the web, where the new user interface design elements worked together to highlight the Foundation’s ideals of humility, open-mindedness, and curiosity.

mobile mockups of the new John Templeton Foundation website, displaying the updated Foundation brand
John Templeton Foundation's grant funding areas on their new website
A unique dual-scroll page highlights the Foundation’s major funding areas
new Templeton Foundation web area for Ideas, hosting content dedicated to telling grantee stories for the Foundation
The world-class Templeton Ideas blog promotes exploration and learning
05

Technology That Works

Our technical team connected the WordPress content management system to the client’s existing grant, calendar, and news databases. At a result, grant data can be searched or filtered by funding area, year, and geographic region.

06

A Strong Foundation

The new brand and web design garnered positive feedback from the board, academic community, media, and philanthropic partners around the world.

Grant Database Visits Increased By
100%
After the launch of the redesigned site, overall traffic to the Our Grants section of the site increased. In particular, the average time spent on the Grantmaking Process page increased by almost a minute as users engaged with the redesigned content.
Funding Area Page Bounce Rate Reduced By
17%
The new site introduced individual funding area landing pages. These new pages maintain strong traffic and represent over 15% of the site’s pageviews, attracting potential grantees and partners to the Foundation’s areas of focus.
New record for qualified grant applications in
2022
In 2022 the Foundation received 2,934 grant submissions, a record for any single cycle in JTF’s history. Sixty percent of the submissions cleared the Foundation’s rigorous criteria for consideration.
Quote
Push10’s team helped us refine our brand, clarify and sharpen the messaging, and create a visually stunning and highly user-friendly site for our stakeholders. We could not be more pleased with our Push10 experience.
-Michael Murray, Senior Vice President, John Templeton Foundation

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