The Legal Aid Society was founded in New York in 1876 by a coalition of lawyers, merchants, and businessmen to defend the rights of immigrants. As the Design Director and lead at Constructive, my redesign of their site focused on bringing that history and New York richness into a new, responsive digital home. Through the use of clear typographic rules, structured content, and iconography, their site can act as another way for New Yorkers who are the victims of discrimination to get help and legal services.
In order to bring this digital experience into the 21st century, we first conducted a full audit of their their content and organizational goals. One of the more interesting features was to show their global reach. In the site architecture and then in functionality, I made sure their audience could see where they worked, and on what. I also set up a multi-language typographic system in Chinese, German, and English, to account for their publishing workflows.
A critical part of this redesign was building tools that helped New Yorkers get legal support, regardless of who they are, where they come from, or how they identify. Through the wireframing and design process, we prototyped and refined a number of tools that made access to services simpler, explained our rights as citizens, and lowered barriers to understanding the justice system.