Acumen Fund is a non-profit with a difference. Their approach to alleviating world poverty issues is to create and invest in small to medium size local businesses who work within specific areas of aid, adding both knowledge and capital to ensure their success and sustainability. The four areas of concentration are water, health, housing and energy. By investing and building scalable businesses they are making a very visible difference in the lives of millions of people in East Africa, India and Pakistan.

Following on from their brand standards which I had also created, I designed this emailer (while working with MSDS) for use in keeping investors and the broader Acumen Fund community updated on their progress. It was designed to stand out from the usual non-profit styles, utilising eye-catching colour fields and a bold graphic style to draw the viewer through the piece and underscore Acumen Fund’s message. The emailer is sent out as a letter from Jacqueline Novogratz (the founder) on a quarterly basis.

I decided to use the core brand palette to represent each season, with blue for Winter, orange for Autumn/Fall, green for Spring and pink for Summer. This helped to easily differentiate each emailer and to keep each one seem unique and attractive. Complementary photography (to each color) anchors the masthead and sets the tone for the subject matter in the letter.

A key difference to the previous email style (which was essentially one continuous and extremely long email) was the addition of a sidebar through which the user could quickly see what was in this quarters email and go directly to a section of particular interest to them. The content sidebar picks up the seasonal color palette to maintain consistency.

You can learn more about Acumen Fund here, or sign up to join their community and also receive this email update here.