National Center for State Courts
Modernizing and strengthening a legacy brand
When an institution has earned deep trust over decades, modernizing it without losing what made it trustworthy is a delicate challenge.
The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) has worked since 1971 to improve the court systems that protect and serve our communities. They came to Interactive Strategies to modernize their brand, simplify their brand architecture, and design an identity and website that clearly tells their story of service and commitment to individuals, citizens, and the rule of law.
NCSC's existing brand and digital presence had grown complex over time. The challenge was to give audiences a clear, cohesive picture of who NCSC is and why state courts matter to everyday life.
What we did
- Analytics
- Brand strategy
- Content strategy
- Copywriting
- Drupal
- Information architecture
- Performance tracking
- UX
- Visual design
- Website design
1%
increase in site search usage
1%
increase in site traffic to key page
The focus
NCSC had 50-plus years of credibility, a network of the nation's leading court professionals, and a body of research that few institutions could match. What they needed was a brand and a digital presence that made all that accessible to the people courts are meant to serve.
Our strategy
We started with the evidence. Research with court professionals and gave us the foundation to make every strategic decision with confidence during our eighteen-month engagement with the NCSC team.
Reframing proximity. Courts and NCSC can feel distant from everyday life, but they sit at the center of our neighborhoods and communities. Through brand strategy and messaging, we repositioned NCSC not as a governing body but as a vital partner in people's daily lives and liberties.
Building from research. Through comprehensive interviews, focus groups, workshops, awareness and perception surveys, and usability testing, we built an evidence-based foundation for brand strategy and architecture, naming, messaging, and user experience design. Every decision was supported by data.
Systematizing the brand. Simplifying and unifying NCSC's communications meant introducing clear guidelines for type, color, photography, and patterns. The resulting design system supports an evolving library of components for NCSC's digital platforms, ensuring consistent brand expression across every touchpoint.
Expanding content reach. To make NCSC's extensive content library more accessible, we implemented AI-powered semantic and keyword search. We also built AI-assisted summary generation within their Drupal CMS, driven by custom prompts tailored to NCSC's content and voice, so more people can find and use what NCSC produces.
Supporting digital operations: NCSC manages the digital ecosystems for several partner organizations and needed an efficient way to manage website content and create microsites that have unique look and feels. We developed an intuitive microsite builder that allows CMS users to configure and launch a microsite on their own so that partner organizations can maintain a distinct digital presence with ease.
The results
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