work Chief.com

Top-down conversion: editorial tools for C-Suite disruption

The career network for senior executive women, Chief, partnered with Happy Cog to create a new thought leadership content platform.

Services

Strategy, UX, Engineering, Design, Analytics, and Development: Visual identity, Website redesign, Front-end development, CMS: Sanity, GA4, SEO

Industry

Social Impact

By connecting women executives, offering one-on-one coaching, and making the business case for equity, Chief is changing the balance of power in corporate America. Their new magazine aims to be the vanguard of that message.

Initially called Insights, the online publication covers a wide range of topics impacting women in the workplace. The website has two primary goals: first, to become a go-to resource for women’s workplace advice, converting dedicated readers into members; and second, to attract the attention of those industry leaders, investors, and corporate boards who must be responsible and accountable for change. This is an overwhelmingly male audience, as 72% of all c-level positions and roughly 80% of executive boards are made up by men. The editorial charter is therefore broad and inclusive, with articles on topics such as culture, DEI, and crisis management written with all leaders in mind.


The design is similarly careful not to play with stereotypes or stand on graphic motifs traditionally coded female. We leveraged the lighter hues of Chief’s color palette (sorry Barbie—no pink!) and rebalanced the central type pairing, placing greater emphasis on the serif, Recife, to differentiate the editorial design from other big-name business magazines using Helvetica-likes. Careful attention was also paid to article structure, with typographic cues, such as contrasted headings and lists, facilitating easy scanning.


The site is built on Sanity.