Designing a digital home for a climate partnership

Connected by Water is an alliance of seven organisations working together to reduce flood risk and build climate resilience across South Yorkshire.

Our brief was to design a website that clearly communicates this shared purpose. They wanted an online presence that would transform dense technical information into accessible content, helping people understand and act on flood resilience.

The result is a digital platform that tells the story of Connected by Water so far, explains why their work matters and encourages people to take action in their communities.

Our approach

We began by immersing ourselves in all things flood resilience. Being local to different corners of South Yorks, our team has personal experience of local flood events – so we were genuinely curious to learn more about that nature of the catchment.

We learned a LOT about the area’s flood risk and climate impacts. Bringing together this understanding as lay people and the key aims of Connected by Water, we mapped out a clear, easily navigable website structure.

Visual storytelling

Our designer John leaned heavily on visual storytelling to explain complex systems in a quick and easy manner.

He brought in a range of icons to illustrate key principles, produced an animation to show how catchments work, and plotted major events on a visual timeline.

We retained the existing colour palette in our designs, creating a visual language that sits comfortably alongside the various partners’ brands.

Clear narrative and navigation

Our copywriter Kat’s task was to communicate Connected by Water’s key messages in a way that wasn’t overwhelming or alarmist. The right information needed to be easily available to the right audience, potentially at a time of emergency.

Alongside the client team, we drew on the extensive action plan and restructured content for clarity and accessibility. We established an empathetic, human tone of voice and adopted consistent calls to action across the website.

We worked closely with the web developers at Combine Studio throughout the build, ensuring that design, content and functionality progressed together and met the client’s needs.