East Palo Alto Community Archive
How might we enable the members of a community to compile their history, preserve their culture and values amidst shifting demographics, and share their stories with the world?
For this project, Idea2Form partnered with the East Palo Alto Community Archive (EPACA) to co-create an internationally recognized repository of historical information about the community of East Palo Alto.
The result was a culturally inclusive brand, communications, website strategy, and a future-proof, user-friendly, multilingual digital archive that incorporated complex industry-standard technologies and formal archiving processes.
EPACA is on a mission to collect, share, promote, celebrate, and preserve the unique history of East Palo Alto for future generations.
While EPACA had established a clear vision for the archive, they grappled with how best to market their initiative and navigate the complexities of storing and showcasing an archive digitally. EPACA sought a full-service design partner highly skilled in co-design or participatory design that could work meaningfully with community members to co-create and implement design solutions. The goals for this project included:
- developing a culturally congruent brand strategy that reflects the unique character and diversity of East Palo Alto
- designing and building a internationally recognized digital archive that would enable the community to become archivists
- fostering meaningful engagement with key audiences to build excitement for the archive
Our priority throughout the design process was to ensure that the community felt that their voices were heard and saw their values and ideas reflected in all designs. We utilized Co-design (also known as Participatory Design) to co-create the brand, social strategy, and UX design for the digital archive.
Once the strategies were approved by various stakeholders, the Idea2Form team began developing brand assets, social media campaigns, and building a landing page for the project.
Idea2form completed designs for the digital archive in late 2021 and spent 2022 developing and testing the digital archive for its big debut in October 2022.
Idea2Form also collaborated with EPACA on several storytelling projects such as an ongoing video profile series focused on local residents, entitled The People of East Palo Alto, and a forthcoming mini-documentary on EPA entitled, Small, But Mighty: The Story of East Palo Alto.
Idea2Form proudly serves as EPACA’s design agency of record, providing integral design services, photo and video services, thought partnership, social media management and website maintenance/support. In lieu of a dedicated in-house comms team, Idea2Form has allowed for EPACA to have robust communications and technical capacity that rivals organizations 10x its size.
Tomas Alvarez III, Lexx Valdez, Kyle Barrios, Alejandro Michell, Rey Robles, Idris Agüero, Mar Trava, Edith Cauich, Danny Cen, Marja Carrillo, MaríaEmilia Morazán, Halline Overby, Ariel Nuñez
Omowale Satterwhite, Sharifa Wilson, EPACA Brand Tasks Force, EPACA Website Working Group
Ariane Bertrand, Mele Latu, Maria Barr
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