Carnegie Foundation
Objective
The Carnegie Foundation has long been a respected voice in educational innovation. But with a growing audience that includes administrators, educators, students, and policymakers, their digital presence needed to do more. The challenge: update the website to reflect Carnegie’s commitment to addressing systemic inequity in education, without abandoning their legacy codebase or established visual identity.
Carnegie required a design partner that could navigate technical constraints while creating a bold, unifying visual language that would resonate across a diverse and mission-driven audience.
Scope
Stakeholder Interviews & User Research
Content & Workflow Audit
UX & Information Architecture
Web Design & Development
Visual Language & CSS Styling
The Solution
Our design direction drew inspiration from the visual language of social movements: bold typography, high-contrast elements, and strong color accents that speak to the urgency and optimism behind Carnegie’s work.
Barretto-Co. began by conducting stakeholder interviews, user research, and a landscape audit of peer institutions. This discovery process allowed us to define the top goals of the redesign: improved usability, more compelling storytelling, and alignment with the foundation’s vision of transformational change in education.
With limited access to overhaul the backend, we focused our efforts on redesigning the primary and secondary web pages, applying a new global CSS styling system to unify the experience.
The result is a web experience that is more engaging, accessible, and reflective of the foundation’s values.
Impact
When design meets strategy, even legacy systems can tell bold new stories.
Carnegie’s refreshed website now better serves its audiences while reinforcing the organization’s leadership in educational equity. It bridges tradition with progress, supporting the foundation’s mission to ensure every student has the opportunity to live a healthy, dignified, and fulfilling life.
The Visual Language
Typography
The Carnegie Foundation’s mission is to catalyze transformational change in education so that every student has the opportunity to live a healthy, dignified, and fulfilling life.
