Background

Helping a long-standing industry leader gain the recognition they deserve by modernizing their brand, improving SEO, and clarifying their digital presence.

The Problem

The Alberta Real Estate Foundation supports numerous initiatives each year and plays a significant role in the province’s real estate sector, yet their impact often goes unnoticed. Facing an outdated, underutilized website and minimal social media presence, AREF set out to rebrand and revitalize their digital identity, aiming to bring fresh energy to the foundation and make their work more visible and accessible.

BRand refresh

From Fragmented to Fluid: Systemizing and Creating a Modern Brand

Brand Refinement

To modernize AREF's visual identity and position them as a forward-thinking industry leader, we developed a comprehensive brand refresh:

  • A refined new logo and wordmark that reflect AREF’s forward-thinking identity

  • A dynamic, modern color palette designed to invigorate visual communications

  • Clean, digital-first typography that enhances clarity and readability

  • Robust brand guidelines to maintain consistency across every touchpoint

Website Strategy

Mapping the Experience: Collaborating on Strategy, Structure, and Storytelling

Addressing Challenges

Alberta Real Estate foundation offers numerous resources, grants and important information about the real estate sector, yet analytics show people are no accessing their website.

  • Improve overall SEO on the new site. A lot of improvements will be made through the new build with Sanity increasing site speed and performance.

  • Increase discoverability of resources, allow better filtering and ensuring content is quality and helpful to users.

  • Improve overall site navigation making grant information more accessible to the user.

Identifying user goals to surface the most important content: resources, grants, and funded initiatives.

Content Buckets

Resources

Funding

Funded Projects

Brokers

Resources

Collections

ReaL Estate Leadership

Built Environment

Land

Funding

Investment Grants

Development Grants

Sponsorship Grants

Anniversary Grant

Projects - already funded

Investment Grants

Development Grants

Sponsorship Grants

Anniversary Grant

Brokers

Brokers

Newsroom

Contact

About Us

Team

Governance

Design Solutions

How to improve navigation for users to make the primary offerings of Alberta Real Estate Foundation discoverable?

How to make funding opportunities more accessible and easier to understand requirements for users looking for grants?

Solution

Clear conscise flows and content breakdown: better comprehension, reduced cognitive load, and increased task success

Using modular sections lets you present fewer elements at a time, so users can better retain and process what’s in front of them—especially in multi-step processes like applications.Draws attention

How can we optimize, organize, highlight and improve filtering resources on the site?

Solution

Multiple ways to browse: While it is still possible to "browse all" and utilize filtering, we created grouped collections that highlight a specific category.

Why this is helpful: Organizing resources into grouped categories allows for clearer, more prominent section headings that help users quickly scan and find what they need.

  • Draws attention

  • Improves discoverability

  • Supports content reuse

  • Reduces overwhelm

Background

Helping a long-standing industry leader gain the recognition they deserve by modernizing their brand, improving SEO, and clarifying their digital presence.

The Problem

The Alberta Real Estate Foundation supports numerous initiatives each year and plays a significant role in the province’s real estate sector, yet their impact often goes unnoticed. Facing an outdated, underutilized website and minimal social media presence, AREF set out to rebrand and revitalize their digital identity, aiming to bring fresh energy to the foundation and make their work more visible and accessible.

BRand refresh

From Fragmented to Fluid: Systemizing and Creating a Modern Brand

Brand Refinement

To modernize AREF's visual identity and position them as a forward-thinking industry leader, we developed a comprehensive brand refresh:

  • A refined new logo and wordmark that reflect AREF’s forward-thinking identity

  • A dynamic, modern color palette designed to invigorate visual communications

  • Clean, digital-first typography that enhances clarity and readability

  • Robust brand guidelines to maintain consistency across every touchpoint

Website Strategy

Mapping the Experience: Collaborating on Strategy, Structure, and Storytelling

Addressing Challenges

Alberta Real Estate foundation offers numerous resources, grants and important information about the real estate sector, yet analytics show people are no accessing their website.

  • Improve overall SEO on the new site. A lot of improvements will be made through the new build with Sanity increasing site speed and performance.

  • Increase discoverability of resources, allow better filtering and ensuring content is quality and helpful to users.

  • Improve overall site navigation making grant information more accessible to the user.

Identifying user goals to surface the most important content: resources, grants, and funded initiatives.

Content Buckets

Resources

Funding

Funded Projects

Brokers

Resources

Collections

ReaL Estate Leadership

Built Environment

Land

Funding

Investment Grants

Development Grants

Sponsorship Grants

Anniversary Grant

Projects - already funded

Investment Grants

Development Grants

Sponsorship Grants

Anniversary Grant

Brokers

Brokers

Newsroom

Contact

About Us

Team

Governance

Design Solutions

How to improve navigation for users to make the primary offerings of Alberta Real Estate Foundation discoverable?

How to make funding opportunities more accessible and easier to understand requirements for users looking for grants?

Solution

Clear conscise flows and content breakdown: better comprehension, reduced cognitive load, and increased task success

Using modular sections lets you present fewer elements at a time, so users can better retain and process what’s in front of them—especially in multi-step processes like applications.Draws attention

How can we optimize, organize, highlight and improve filtering resources on the site?

Solution

Multiple ways to browse: While it is still possible to "browse all" and utilize filtering, we created grouped collections that highlight a specific category.

Why this is helpful: Organizing resources into grouped categories allows for clearer, more prominent section headings that help users quickly scan and find what they need.

  • Draws attention

  • Improves discoverability

  • Supports content reuse

  • Reduces overwhelm