Anti-Defamation League

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is an international Jewish civil rights organization with over a hundred years of experience in raising awareness and fighting extremism. Since the 2016 presidential election, they grew increasingly concerned with the rise of hate crime reporting and the growing use of antisemitic language in the political and public spheres. To combat these alarming incidents, we worked with the ADL to create a comprehensive digital report on the history of antisemitism (both internationally and within the United States) as well as the seven most pervasive antisemitic myths.

While the ADL team had an eighty page base report, we wanted to create an interactive version that would allow for better social sharing of individual elements as well as invite visitors to carefully read all of the data, something that might be overwhelming if just presented with a wall of text. Starting with a series of interactive content concepts, we quickly narrowed down on a structure that had a base landing page, individual myth and history landing pages, and an interactive loading structure that could pull those separate pages into a single screen without the visitor having to navigate away or lose their place. Once we had the overall content structure in place, we worked to create a series of high-level modules that would build out the site, including embedded videos, image sliders, and interactive footnotes.

For the design, ADL wanted something striking and bold while still being easy to scan and read. Based on their stated inspiration and existing branding, we created a series of style tiles to hone in on the goal — one based on the current ADL web presence, one based on elements of the print styles, and one based on longform journalism.

With a final style and wireframes in hand, we turned the report into a visually gripping digital experience, with large full screen images, a sidebar navigation element, and striking deep reds and blacks. We emulated the legibility and tangibility of the print medium while still creating something innovative for the digital space, all while encouraging the ADL team to layout their image and video assets in a variety of ways to best tell the story.

In the lead up to launch, we made sure the experience was smooth and consistent — lazy loading of all images and assets helped page speeds, JavaScript animations achieved consistent frame rates across all browsers and devices, and ajax loading of myth and history pages meant visitors would never be lost.

Visitors could share not only pages of the site, but also selected quotes from within the stories on social media. Video hero areas on each myth page and bold hover elements reinforced the narrative and kept visitors engaged. Each page encouraged visitors to get involved by signing up with the Anti-Defamation League to join the fight against antisemitism and help them advocate for civil rights for all.

The site was an honoree for a 2021 Webby Award in the Charitable Organizations/Non-Profit Websites and Mobile Sites category.