Nuffield Council on Bioethics – New brand and website for leading policy and research centre

2024 – ongoing

WebsitesBrand

Nuffield Council on Bioethics (NCOB) is a leading independent policy and research centre that identifies, analyses and advises on ethical issues in biomedicine and health to benefit people and society.

We partnered with NCOB on a project to update and align their brand with their main funder, Nuffield Foundation. They also needed a new website that more effectively targeted their policy audience and showcased their work on future trends.

Brand alignment

NCOB’s brand had existed in it’s previous form since 1991 and was out of step with the rest of the Nuffield Foundation’s brand family. The client also needed a more robust toolkit of assets, templates and guidelines to help them maintain consistency across their channels.

Our initial work looking at organisational objectives and audience needs formed the foundation of the brand work and the later website development. We conducted a small group workshop of exercises designed to help us tease out the personality and values of NCOB.

During the exploration stage, we developed three design routes focused around a small number brand deliverables, such as a notional website homepage, a publication cover and social media posts. Through this process we explored different options around colour, graphics, imagery and typography.

Addressing a policy audience

An important focus of the project was to more effectively address a policy audience which was achieved by supplementing NCOB’s existing in-depth analysis of topics with engaging new formats that provide up-to-date insights for decision makers.

This was supported by improved navigation and search, cross-linking of content and more intuitive user journeys overall. The block-based approach to building page layouts provide NCOB with much more flexibility and a dynamic in-page navigation allows them to move away from PDF’s to more accessible long-form HTML content that users can move

NCOB also had a wealth of content that stretched back as far as 1993, which needed to be carefully migrated.

Horizon scanning

An important part of NCOB’s work involves identifying future developments in biomedicine and health. Each year, they publish a ‘horizon scan’ that displays the topics they have identified within a timeframe in which we think they could raise ethical implications in the UK.

In the past, this content had been published as static infographics. To coincide with the launch of the website, we developed an interactive tool which allows users to scroll along a time-based axis and select topics that have been grouped into short, medium and long term sections. Each topic provides an overview and allows users to access more in-depth related content from across the website.