Paco Lau
Global Inheritance · Spring 2026

Brand & Website Re-Design

Global Inheritance brand and website re-design
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01

My Role

Global Inheritance is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that creates art-driven experiences — installations, Carpoolchella, speaker series, cultural activations at festivals like Coachella — to inspire action on environmental and social issues. Their site wasn’t keeping pace with that work, so the team set out to answer: How might we redesign Global Inheritance’s website to sustainably communicate its year-round impact, ensure intentionality, and inspire broader connections to take action?

As one of six designers on this team, I contributed to the competitive analysis and website audit, helped synthesize findings from user surveys into personas and key takeaways, and designed wireframes and final UI across the redesigned pages.

Contributed

  • Competitive analysis & website audit
  • Research synthesis & personas
  • Wireframing
  • Final UI design
02

Research

The team ran a competitive analysis, a full audit of the existing website, and surveyed 9 past Global Inheritance volunteers to understand where the current site was falling short.

Competitive Analysis — benchmarked against The Ocean Cleanup, Eventbrite, Catchafire, and charity: water

What’s Working

  • Strong, contrasting visual branding
  • Credibility through statistics and evidence

What’s NOT Working

  • Information overload from too much text and competing CTAs
  • Inconsistent navigation and design across pages

Website Audit — four recurring pain points across the current site:

Clarity & Understanding

  • Unclear purpose of platform
  • Text-heavy and harder to digest

Navigation & Structure

  • Scattered, redundant pages and long scrolling
  • Users prefer simple, filterable browsing

Actions & User Flow

  • Key actions like volunteering or donating aren’t obvious
  • Users aren’t clearly guided to next steps

Visuals & Engagement

  • Inconsistent hierarchy; key info is buried
  • Visuals, testimonials, and impact go underused

User Surveys — 9 past Global Inheritance volunteer respondents surfaced three themes:

Friction in Sign Up

The current sign-up flow adds unnecessary steps between interest and involvement.

Motivated by More Than Cause

Volunteers return for the events, the environmental mission, and career growth — not just altruism.

Gap in Incentives

Almost no one felt incentives for volunteering were clearly communicated.

03

Design & Iteration

Research findings converged into two personas that shaped every design decision that followed.

Allison Y.

Student / First-Time Visitor

Needs

Clear, immediate understanding of mission and impact; simple pathways to learn more or act.

Pain Points

Doesn’t quickly understand what the organization does; feels overwhelmed or unsure where to start.

Daniel L.

Volunteer / Returning User

Needs

Easy access to volunteer opportunities and updates; clear information on how to stay engaged over time.

Pain Points

Hard to find current opportunities or next steps; no clear way to track involvement or continued impact.

Key Takeaway 1

Users need to quickly understand Global Inheritance’s mission and incentives to join.

  • • Clear, concise, & contextual language
  • • Visual hierarchy
  • • Program highlights
  • • Visual storytelling
  • • Measurable outcomes
  • • Testimonials

Key Takeaway 2

Users need clear guidance and prompting on how to take action.

  • • Buttons & hyperlinks
  • • Call-to-action density
  • • Short page design
  • • Action confirmation
  • • Program/event filters
  • • Category grouping

To streamline the user experience, three additional pages were wireframed alongside a refreshed About page:

  • • Coachella — activations, get involved, and volunteer sign-up
  • • Call to Artists — apply as an artist and join the artist community
  • • Programs — browsable gallery of Global Inheritance initiatives
  • • About — mission, history, and milestones
Low-fidelity wireframe of the Coachella page with activations and volunteer sign-up

Branding direction: sustainable, a lighter tone, and a secondary color palette.

Primary Palette

Sea

Butter

Tangerine

Secondary Palette

Sea

Matcha

Blush

Blue Tint

Feature implementation across the redesigned site:

01

Permanent Navigation Bar

02

Improved Site Architecture

03

Engaging Components

04

Submission Page

05

Volunteer Opportunity Hub

06

Frequent CTAs

04

Final Deliverable

The redesigned site leads with Global Inheritance’s impact, gives every initiative a clear home, and puts a path to get involved on every page — ten pages in total, unified under one visual system.

  • Landing Page
  • About
  • Program Page
  • Coachella
  • News
  • Donate
  • Get Involved
  • Partnerships
  • Contact
  • Call to Artists
Final Global Inheritance landing page
Final About page for Global Inheritance

Presentation Slides

Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 1Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 2Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 3Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 4Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 5Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 6Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 7Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 8Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 9Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 10Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 11Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 12Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 13Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 14Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 15Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 16Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 17Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 18Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 19Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 20Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 21Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 22Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 23Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 24Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 25Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 26Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 27Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 28Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 29Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 30Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 31Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 32Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 33Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 34Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 35Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 36Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 37Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 38Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 39Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 40Global Inheritance brand and website re-design presentation, slide 41

A collaboration between ICB and Global Inheritance in Spring 2026. Project Lead: Katie Wang. Designers: Paco Lau, Georgia Hadley, Julie Hsu, Katie Hion, Sasha Khajanchi, Shaylyn Tran. Advised by Taylor Tsan and Tanvi Patil. Mentored by Eric Ritz.