Brand and website design and re-platforming

Additionally, we felt that an organization with as high a profile as the WHCA lacked an identifiable visual brand that was emblematic of the important work they do, which is to promote excellence in journalism and to ensure robust news coverage of the president and the presidency.

The WHCA board chose Happy Cog for the project, based in part on our deep experience with other organizations like the Institute for New Economic Thinking, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The objectives

Our primary objectives for the work were to:

• Convey the importance and mission of the organization
• Create a compelling and identifiable visual brand
• Create a bold yet easy-to-use site experience
• Make content updates simple by implementing a modern content management system
• Highlight the centerpiece of the WHCA: the annual dinner
• Provide means to accommodate future archival content

Prior to our work, it was important for us to come as close to the perspective of a White House Correspondent as possible. Happy Cog Principal Greg Hoy and Design Director Michael Johnson were invited to the White House for a tour of the Press Room in the West Wing and the North Lawn (with the unofficial moniker “Pebble Beach”) where correspondents often do their live reports.

A distinctive visual brand

Apart from a (really cool) artifact we were made aware of from 1914 which portrays a symbol representing the organization, the WHCA (in the digital era) hadn’t had a distinct visual brand to call its own.

One of our first recommendations was to design a visual identity for the WHCA. We always provide multiple concepts from unique perspectives.

In the end, the chosen mark combines two visual ideas: a flag on a pole (symbolizing a free press as being the strongest pillar of democracy), and the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room’s recognizable seating layout. When animated, the letters fill the space, akin to the correspondents before briefings begin.

A bold new look

Our redesign underscores the association’s rich history of independence and excellence, with a strong nod to the future. Perhaps the best-known aspect of what the WHCA does is the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. A primary objective of the redesign was to make photos and videos from the dinner easy to access, and to present them in all of their full-res glory.

Another primary goal of the WHCA is to support scholarships aimed at encouraging a new generation of reporters, so highlighting scholarship winners and participating higher educational institutions was paramount.

Meet the (dot) press

The legacy domain for WHCA’s website was whca.net, something that seemed at odds with the association’s purpose. While .net (one of the original top-level domains) was originally intended to be used for organizations involved in networking technologies, it had become a general-purpose namespace that was frequently adopted by the advertising industry. It seemed like an odd choice for the WHCA, over something like, say, .org. Among the newer top-level domains, we thought .press was a natural fit for the WHCA. The WHCA agreed. Therefore, our redesign can now be found at whca.press.

The infrastructure to handle it all

Since the previous WHCA website was simply static HTML, Happy Cog needed to implement a modern content management system in order to facilitate content publishing. There was already familiarity with WordPress within the WHCA, so we implemented the platform with several customizations to serve the WHCA’s specific needs. We deployed the site on a fully managed WordPress host.

The site has held up through the traffic spikes that come with every annual dinner.