We created this post in partnership with Moon March to share the behind-the-scenes of the creation of the all-new Good Good Good site.
When Good Good Good launched in 2015, we always knew that our goal was to reach as many people as possible with real good news (not just feel good news). Over time, our team and audience grew, but our mission of finding the helpers — and inspiring new ones — never changed.
When the time came to expand our work beyond social media and our print Goodnewspaper to a content-forward website, we wanted to find a creative agency that aligned with our values and had deep experience building enduring brands.
Enter Minneapolis-based Moon March: A creative agency that partners with causes, campaigns and companies that are creating a better future.
This year, Good Good Good has been working with Moon March to transform our website into a robust online magazine.
We’re truly so excited about the impact this site will have in our mission to help people feel more hopeful and do more good. And we’re proud of the creative journey Moon March took us on to get to this point.
With Moon March’s expertise, we were able to achieve our objectives:
- Help people feel more hopeful — enable the website to be the primary source for our community to find good news in the midst of the heartbreak, pain, and injustice of the world.
- Help people do more good — enable our website to be a trusted resource for how to make the most meaningful impact across a variety of important topics and current events.
- Don’t just tell people what kind of good news we care about — actually showcase it through our content.
- Bring more people into the Good Good Good community — attract the right people. We reach the most inspiring and impactful people in the world and we want everything we share to help attract more of this special kind of person, and to provide value to their lives so they can continue moving the needle for good.
“What I liked about Moon March is that they had an interesting perspective and angle that I thought was really compelling. And they focus on brands doing good.
Their empathy and understanding of mission driven companies really brought out that value. They really understood what we were about even when we weren't fully successful at communicating it.”
— Branden Harvey, Founder of Good Good Good
About Moon March:
Prior to starting Moon March, Josh Chambers had 10 years of marketing and entrepreneurial work under his belt - including an award winning financial tech startup. He ran strategy for large agencies in New York and worked with clients like Reebok, Viacom, Ninja Turtles, Google, Advil, Puma, and more.
Josh’s experience as an entrepreneur, coupled with running global brands, gave him a clear vision of what kind of agency he wanted to run and what clients he wanted to help achieve their goals. Like Good Good Good, Josh wanted to create change in the world for the better — and now he’s working with companies who are doing just that.
You can get to know Josh on a personal level in our podcast episode with him about navigating change as an opportunity for growth. Josh is also an executive coach and an expert in walking the challenging road between one stage of life and the next.
“I build teams around specific projects and have a SWAT team approach. So sometimes the project can be about fifteen people — sometimes it's three people — but it's only ever people that have at least ten years of experience, and they're the best at what they do.”
— Josh Chambers
Identifying the need for a new website with Moon March:
Prior to beginning the design process, we worked on how to best communicate exactly what Good Good Good does so our website can be clear for our new audiences.
During this process, Moon March:
Helped us set a clear goal for the website:
We knew what we wanted to do with the website, but Moon March knew best how to get there. “If you had any chance of competing with other magazines, it needed to read and feel like a magazine,” said Josh. “Good Good Good needed to stop looking like a marketing site, but also needed to not look like a blog. it needed to be comparable to print and everyone in print has a legit online magazine presence.”
Gave honest feedback about our growth opportunities:
During the appraisal period, Moon March helped us identify what wasn’t working about our messaging on our old site. “As an empathetic outsider, Josh was able to understand and communicate our core values better than we could at the time — and that was one of the big reasons why I knew that this would make for a great partnership,” said Branden.
Established the foundation for the brand:
In order to build a website for Good Good Good, Moon March had to really understand us and help solidify our brand strategy — and that started with a lengthy interview process. “The first thing that I did was I talked to Branden for four hours,” said Josh. “Why did you start this? Where did it come from? What's worked, what hasn't worked? I take that and I condense that into about six or seven sentences, which becomes the foundation for our brand moving forward.”
Gathering the components for the website:
After establishing our goals for the website, the next stage Moon March walked us through was making a collaborative plan for building out the design.
Here’s what Moon March did to prepare the actual work:
Decide the key features:
Much like finding the ingredients for a meal, the team at Moon March was able to identify what we needed on the website to communicate our brand. Together we looked at content based sites (digital media websites like Mother Jones, Supermaker, etc) to see what attributes aligned with Good Good Good.
- Make good news shareable. The world needs more good news - and we wanted the site to be easy to screenshot, share on social media, and send to friends.
- Look good while we do good. Gone are the days of impact-driven brands sacrificing aesthetics. We knew this site needed to be beautiful.
Understood our audience:
Good Good Good didn’t want a website for just anyone; we wanted a space for people who are looking for real good news and ways to make a meaningful difference. This helped Moon March design a site that spoke to people who are changemakers or changemakers-to-be.
Over the finish line with Moon March:
One of the many unique benefits of working with Moon March is how it was a step by step process; the team worked with us so we were included in decision making. By keeping an open line of communication, we understood exactly why they were doing what they were doing and why it was best for Good Good Good.
This is what Moon March did:
Chose a vibrant color palette:
We wanted the aesthetic of the website to be bold, like the people who create change in the world. “When I landed on this color palette, it felt like something that illustrations could mix beautifully with,” said Josh. “It's a nice base. I wanted to keep this blue in this purple reserved for mostly typography. And especially because this is a magazine, the color shouldn't overpower anything.”
Paid attention to the little things:
No detail is too small with Moon March. For example, they added round corners to the design of our site so it would feel more friendly — and they were right.
Prioritized accessibility:
We relied on their expertise to ensure that the Good Good Good website would be user-friendly to all users. From the typeface to the color scheme, the team at Moon March helped us to support all users in navigating the new website.
Thanks to the brains over at Moon March, the new Good Good Good website is everything we imagined and more. Their willingness to work with us on bringing our vision to life — while lending us their expertise on how to best do that — was crucial in creating a website that felt authentic and true to Good Good Good.
For more information on how to work with Moon March, visit moonmarch.com or email them at hello@moonmarch.com
