Impact Marathon
The Impact Marathon Series was born from a dream that they could use the simple power of running to uplift communities and empower runners all over the world.
Website Design & Development
Client: Impact Marathon
Art Direction & Design: Bonito Studio
Strategy: Bonito Studio
Photography: Impact Marathon
Impact Marathon organises trail marathons in Nepal, Jordan, Guatemala, Kenya, and Malawi. For eight years they have traveled with groups of runners to local communities, where they spend a full week visiting projects, engaging with the local community, and taking the runners on a journey where they can find out what Impact really means, and knowing first hand where their fundraising efforts will go. By the end of the week, they run 10K, a half—marathon or full marathon to celebrate the impact journey they began.
As Impact Marathon had been successfully growing for 5 years, the focus was not on a full rebrand but on refining existing concepts like their 'impact runner motif', which enjoyed strong brand recognition within the running world. We were tasked with establishing rules to ensure consistency across platforms and cultures. At the core of each race lay one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), reflecting what Impact Runners were running for.
On another front, we needed to redesign their website and the biggest question the Impact Marathon team had was on how to integrate and reflect the different cultures and communities where they work with the established Impact branding. Because they have multiple experiences -events on more than one destination, the challenge was how do improve the user experience from the moment visitors make the first contact until they receive an email confirming their purchase and at the same time become more visual, attractive and engaging.
By incorporating vibrant colours representing each primary SDG into the branding, we created a framework that identified races based on impact rather than location. The 'Impact Runner motif' underwent restyling, aligning the runner better and enclosing it within a hexagon for context and a strong brand stamp. This branding extended across multiple platforms, from race tees to Instagram, and across diverse geographical locations like Nepal, Guatemala, Malawi, and the United Kingdom.
When organising the website redesign, the primary question for the Impact Marathon team was how to integrate and reflect the different cultures and communities where they work while maintaining the established Impact branding. With multiple experiences across various destinations, improving the user experience from the first contact to purchase confirmation was paramount.
We began with a session to understand objectives, goals, and ideas, followed by wireframes to redefine page structure, relevant CTAs, and key information. Addressing concerns and doubts before moving to the visual phase, we integrated colours, fonts, and photos.
The result was a new design that seamlessly integrated the essence of each experience, culture, and partner organisation, connecting each page, call-to-action to ensure user engagement and satisfaction, marking one of our most rewarding challenges yet.
Our client's thoughts
There are a heck of a lot of moving parts and USPs to what we do that can easily get in the way of effective storytelling. We have always struggled with honing our narrative. The goal of the website redesign was to make that storytelling more direct so that people can see our passion and our ability to deliver right from the start. There is a strong clarity to each page now. The blog integrating with each product page, now gives us the space to deep dive without cluttering the product itself. This flexibility is what we have been searching for and pleased to have harnessed the skills, and deeply caring sensitivity of Bonito with the Easol platform to take our journey to the next level.
