Centennial Transformation: Italian Educators Embrace their Second Century

Entering its second century, this organization of more than 1,100 members was ready to update its website, membership platform, unify its brand, and celebrate its 100th-year

CONCEPT

Brand

The new American Association of Teachers of Italian (AATI) logo created in 2022 was designed to create a modern recognizable brand. With the organization entering its second century, there was a desire to connect to the past yet bring a bold and flexible visual identity that can carry the organization on for many years. AATI encourages chapters to use the new logo with their chapter name below it (in green) instead of each creating their own chapter logo, thus unifying the organization’s brand.

There was no doubt that the color palette would match that of the flag of Italy, even if the Association is American in origin. So, the style of the logo was based on a Swiss Graphic Designer who worked in Milan, Italy, at the end of World War II for an Italian Publisher. Specifically, the overlapping uppercase letters form an acronym for the organization. The typography is a modern San serif font: Avenir Next in print and Montserrat online. Both typefaces for the brand have multiple weights, from light to heavy, but are not overbearing in the difference. The logo uses two weights, with part being in all uppercase and part being upper and lowercase. The iconography uses a hand-drawn style using the primary brand colors and secondary brand colors.

Website

The original website and membership sites were separate from each other and tied to two different Universities. The main site housed information about the organization. A secondary password-protected site handled all the membership information and access to benefits. The goal was to unify these two sites.

As what happens to all websites over time, different people, new content, and new requirements for the organization caused the site to have developed a confusing heirarcy that didn’t necessarily encourage membership. Blue Zoo Creative helped create a new structure for future growth and ‘buckets’ to place new information as it becomes available. Integrating the membership site allowed for additional enhancements; mostly, all the content is in one platform.

In addition to having the option to view the site in English or Italian, some of the membership features include:

• Full access to edit personal profile and make visible or not
• Access to past issues of Italica (a publication that predates the organization)
• Membership Directory
• Member Elections Capable
• eCommerce for memberships and renewals
• Member Forum
• Event Ticket Purchases for members only

Most importantly, AATI has a monthly locally managed hosting and support package that allows them to focus on the members and growth of their organization. At the same time, Blue Zoo Creative helps with creative solutions and website security, updates, management, and updates to image and information content.