As we wrap up 2023, the Radishes have been reflecting on the year – our accomplishments, favorite moments, recommendations and more.
2023 Radish Highlights
The Bunch
We worked from planes, trains, automobiles, beaches, mountains, backyards, front porches, and coffee shops. We had the opportunity to meet in real life for the first time, co-worked with an eclectic group of animal friends, and made the best of our remote-life programs.
The Crop
As always, we had the chance to work with some amazing organizations. While a lot of our work is still cooking (stay tuned in 2024), we are so excited to share some of the work that we've produced this year.
Olmsted Parks Conservancy
Enhancing parks through a community-centered website.
The Olmsted Parks Conservancy (OPC) makes Olmsted-designed parks and parkways even better by preserving and safeguarding them. They bring nature and the community closer together and promote the well-being of residents. With the parks system growing, public interest rising, and substantial investment in new offerings, OPC needed their website to align with their goals, stay true to their values, and support their vision.
We set out to create a website that would prioritize the community, promote sustainability, and center accessibility. Our goal was to build a dynamic online platform that could serve as a hub for events, activities, and volunteer opportunities. We wanted to create a space where all park users could come to get informed and stay engaged.
Holocaust Distortion Training Program
Fighting Holocaust Distortion and Denial, one lesson at a time
The International Holocaust Remembrance Association is dedicated to keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive and accurate around the globe, both to honor the victims and survivors and to safeguard the present and the future by learning from the past. As one of Radish’s longest-standing partners, the IHRA and their partners UNESCO entrusted us to build a custom learning platform to house curriculum developed by some of the world’s most pre-eminent experts on this topic, for use in training classrooms and adult education settings around the world.
What makes this site unique?
The bright yet minimalist design style was chosen to cleanly showcase the MVP of this site - its curricular content, and the testimonies of Holocaust survivors. The clear user journeys, helpful but discreet color systems, and clearly organized training materials come together to give trainers an “out of the box” curriculum they can take into the classroom on iPads or printed paper, and teach directly to Educators, Government Officials, Public Policy Experts, Advocates and Civil Society Organizations all around the world.
Brooklyn Navy Yard
A Structural Face Lift
Brooklyn Navy yard is a one-of-a-kind ecosystem housing 500+ businesses over 300 acres in WW2 shipyard in NYC. Radish has a long standing relationship with the Brooklyn Navy Yard and in 2023 we were tasked with helping them solve a big pain point with their existing site: making the CMS make sense. We revitalized their website with a dynamic platform for greater content control and a seamless brand refresh.The new site is now reflective of their recent rebrand, as well as significantly more user-friendly for the Brooklyn Navy Yard team to update and manage.
The IHRA Branding
Balancing a new visual identity with a rich organizational history
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (the IHRA) – our long-term partner – wanted a fresh, forward-looking visual identity that could integrate with their logo and nod to the organization’s deep history. Their current identity wasn’t working for the IHRA – they didn’t have enough colors, flexibility, or design elements to create a rich, sustainable design system.
The IHRA's message is powerful. Our challenge was to create a new identity that supported it. Designing visuals that would align with content around Holocaust remembrance required a high degree of sensitivity, caution, and consideration.
(RED)
Strategic Replatforming with User Experience at the Center
Radish partnered with (RED), a long-term partner, on a strategic replatforming of their site with improved user experience–for the user as well as for the (RED) team in the backend–at the center.The (RED) team had long outgrown their existing setup on Squarespace and used key changes to their priorities as the perfect opportunity to rethink their structure and move over to a much more functional and user-friendly CMS on Wordpress. Through strategy workshops and exercises, the Radish team helped (RED) think through an ideal future state of their site that better showcased the breadth of their impact and variety of ways individuals can engage with the organization. Radish was responsible for the strategy, information architecture and wireframes of the site before we handed it off to the (RED) team to apply their stellar new branding to the front end.
2024’s crop
As we reflect on the year behind us, it would be hard for us to ignore all the work that happened that isn’t quite ready for snacking on yet but will be ready to share in the new year. The Radishes will be busy launching seven projects in Q1 of the new year.
See more about our year on our Instagram.
Taste Testing
The Radishes are a well-rounded bunch with wide-ranging interests and tastes, and we consumed a lot of content this year. Throughout the year we shared …
49 movies & TV shows
1. Dream Scenario
2. Argentina, 1985
3. The French Dispatch
4. Barbie
5. Minnie and Moskowitz
6. Theater Camp
7. The Rules of the Game
8. Ladri di biciclette
9. The Deepest Breath
10. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
130+ book recommendations
1. The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell
2. In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
3. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
4. Blindness by José Saramago
5. Helena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro
6. This World Does Not Belong to Us by Natalia García Freire
7. The Phenomenology of Spirit by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
8. Borges by Adolfo Bioy Casares
9. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
10. The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
277 songs by 201 artists
And we made a Spotify playlist with the cream of the crop – listen to Radish Radio 2023 here.
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