ASU Sustainable Earth and the Circular Living Lab

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Reaching wider audiences and helping break down barriers to sustainability.

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The Challenge

The need for speed for branding, designing, and developing 2 sustainability websites

Ranked as No. 1 in sustainability education, research, and practice among higher education institutions, ASU is committed to helping create a thriving, sustainable world.

Two initiatives—Sustainable Earth (providing web content on science, news, and tips on everyday sustainability practices) and the Circular Living Lab (a transdisciplinary lab solving complex sustainability challenges)—serve as cornerstones of ASU’s sustainability efforts.

Yet both programs lacked strong visual identities, hindering their ability to offer relevant, timely, easily accessible information to advance everyday sustainability actions.

Circular Living Lab had no website. And the Sustainable Earth site’s content was scattered and its structure confusing, contributing to high exit rates. Plus, with an rapidly approaching grand opening of a new ASU research facility named in honor of sustainability donors on Earth Day, April 22, ASU needed an innovative partner who could work fast to create new branding and visual identites—as well as write, design, and develop two new websites.

We presented Historic Agency with the challenge of taking what can be a rather complex subject matter and making it approachable and accessible. The design concept and user experience they developed achieved exactly what we were aiming to create with Sustainable Earth––an inviting resource that inspires people to take action.

Katelyn Armbruster, M. Ed

Sustainable Earth Program Manager

The Solution

Workshopping visual brand identities and web strategies… fast

Historic Agency dove into both ASU’s Sustainable Earth and Circular Living Lab projects using our proprietary sprint-style workshops designed to produce better, on-brand solutions faster.

Following focus groups and initial workshops, Historic’s team led ASU in multi-day, live-design sprints where stakeholders got real-time access to visual identities and web designs as we created them—so they could speak into and shape the process every step of the way.

The Result

Increasing web traffic and user engagement across digital channels

Historic’s collaborative process not only created client and stakeholder buy-in from the outset but also delivered stand-out brand identities that ASU put to use immediately.

Sustainable Earth’s new website launched ahead of schedule and experienced a marked increase in the amount of time users stay on the site.

Thanks to their new brand identities and web strategies, Sustainable Earth and the Circular Living Lab are reaching wider audiences and helping break down barriers to sustainability.