Helping parents raise kids who thrive

When Maya Smart wanted to redesign her site leading up to her book launch, we couldn’t have been more excited to play a small role in supporting her mission. A leading authority and advocate for child literacy, Maya Smart offers research-based insights and practical tools to promote family literacy, learning, and connection. She already had an incredible vault of resources but needed a space to share news of her upcoming book and speaking events, and was seeking advice on a better way to present her invaluable literacy advice to her audience.

We had fun with the design of this project by tapping into our playful side, adding fun design motifs like confetti and dots of color. However, design can’t be all fun and games. We needed to strike a balance between visual flair and sophistication to reinforce the evidence-laden research articles.

Looking beyond the visuals, functionality and architecture were a focus for the team. One of the main goals of the new website was to restructure the site architecture to ensure that parents would quickly find relevant information. We gave some extra love to rich dropdowns in the navbar and new ways of categorizing resource information.

There were a lot of moving parts in what appears to be a simple front-end experience but the immediate impact is positive. Maya Smart has a digital presence that showcases not only her valuable literacy resources but supports her credibility and the community-changing impact of using literacy to build a more equitable, connected society.