case study
Golden Gate Regional Center
Honoring 60 years of I/DD services with a brand and website centered around community and built for the future, and setting the accessibility standard for regional centers across California.
The Goal: Set the Standard for Access & Equity
Golden Gate Regional Center serves people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) in San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin counties. They connect individuals and families with the services and supports they need to thrive at home, at school, at work, and in community life.
Ahead of their 60th anniversary, GGRC recognized that their visual brand and website no longer reflected the warmth, accessibility, and trust they had built within the community over decades of service. Their existing website was difficult to navigate, overwhelming with information and outdated photos, and lacked consistency.
GGRC hired HeartSpark to lead a full brand refresh and website redesign focused on accessibility, clarity, and creating a more welcoming experience for the thousands of individuals and families who rely on their services every day.
From day one, GGRC's ambition was bigger than their own four walls. The goal was to build a brand and website that would be a model for digital inclusion and cultural competency — setting the standard for all 21 regional centers across California and nationwide. That meant accessibility couldn't be an afterthought, and the brand had to speak clearly to a multilingual, multi-audience community.
Rather than guessing, we started with the people GGRC serves. Working alongside a Bay Area research firm, we helped GGRC run focus groups with the people they serve and their service providers to gather honest, unbiased feedback.
Surveys, focus groups, and advisory groups shaped every major decision — the community told us exactly what wasn't working, what information they wanted from GGRC, and what was missing, so we could fill in the gaps. We turned those findings into clear strategic recommendations, presented to leadership, managers, and the website advisory group so the whole organization moved forward together.
Leading with Listening
A Logo That Tells the Full Story
Sixty years in, GGRC needed a mark that reflected who they've become. The new logo shows two people holding hands to form a bridge — a nod to the Golden Gate, and a symbol of how GGRC connects individuals and families to services and opportunity. It's warmer, clearer, and more welcoming to people who are new to the regional center system. We built it out into a full brand identity and a messaging toolkit so the brand speaks consistently in every language and to every audience.
Before working with Lauren, our brand was kind of a free-for-all…you wouldn’t know our designs were all from the same organization.
Now, every single thing we do, anyone can look at it and say ‘that’s Kids Hub!’ Everything is streamlined, and everyone on our team knows the expectation.
Our new logo makes us more recognizable to the community and more legitimate to our donors. Yes, the investment can feel scary, but it also pushed us to internally think about who we are and how we want to communicate. Now we have such a better grasp on exactly who we are and our value proposition. It’s a commitment, but truly, the best commitment with such potential.”
Templates for the Whole Team
Stationery: Letterhead, notecards, and email signatures to reinforce the brand in daily communication
PowerPoint and Word templates for partner presentations
Updated brochures and infographics
To bring the brand to life across materials, we created a full set of flexible, on-brand templates:
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Now, whether GGRC is speaking to their partners, service providers, or individuals served, their materials are consistent, accessible, and aligned with their mission.
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Social media graphics
A Website That Finally Works as Hard as the Team Does
The new WordPress site was designed and built to WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility standards from the ground up — coded for screen readers and assistive software, and made for phones and tablets. Because the community told us what they needed, we made the things that mattered most genuinely easier: services are now grouped by life stage from Early Start through adulthood, families can search brochures, videos, and links in one multilingual Resource Library, and applying for services is now fully online.
Launching with Confidence
With such a large audience, we knew GGRC's brand and website launch had to be handled with intentionality. Working together, we created a complete launch plan to meet their audiences across email, text, and social media — so they could announce the new brand with confidence and keep the excitement up among all of their service providers and partners.
We created a series of captions, graphics, and videos that cast vision for the new brand, along with a series of instructional videos that walk through the new website features and how to find popular pages — all with the goal of leading the narrative and helping people feel comfortable with the new site and exploring its content.
The Result: A Brand Worthy of the Mission and a Benchmark for Accessibility
GGRC now has a cohesive, professional, fully accessible brand and website that genuinely reflect who they are and serve every member of their community. The site is easier to navigate, works on every device, and makes the most important things — finding services, searching resources, applying online — simpler for the people who need them.
More than that, GGRC got what they set out to build: a model other regional centers can look to. The brand finally matches the mission and is built to lead.
Project team
Lauren Atherton
Creative Direction & Logo Design
Megan Newell & Vivian Suarez
Graphic Design
Diane Pauley
Brand Strategy + Messaging
Hamza Ouaziz
Animation
Services
Audience Research
Logo & Visual Identity
Marketing Templates
Squarespace Website
Focus Areas
Health & Human Services
Completed
May 2026
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