Open University Changemakers

The story of how I helped the Open University create a website which encourages young people to get involved in politics.

The Open University invited me to work on a design for their Changemakers project, which aims to get young Welsh people involved in the political process. My brief was to design a visual identity and a fully bilingual website that educates, informs, and inspires young people.

Political campaigns and parties should communicate their messages clearly and inspire people with their vision. Sadly, having seen dozens of political campaign and party websites, I was left disappointed by the lack of imagination in their designs and was determined to improve on them for the Changemakers project.

Changemakers aims to get young Welsh people involved in the political process. I looked for youth campaigns with strong visual identities, including the Anti-Nazi League, CND, Red Wedge, and Rock Against Racism. I studied their branding, leaflet and poster designs, and merchandising, and also looked at fanzines and music magazines.

I designed a new bilingual English and Cymraeg logo and developed a set of colours and typefaces inspired by material from those youth movements. I created layouts with clipped and occasionally overlapping elements that added energy to the design. I also used AI to help create a cast of young characters. Finally, I developed a static HTML/CSS prototype before integrating a simple-to-use CMS for easy content editing.