Context
The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) supports artists in San Francisco and the Bay Area. Their work spans the realms of contemporary art, performance, film, civic engagement, and public life. Centering artists as essential to social and cultural movement, YBCA reimagines the role an arts institution can play in the community it serves.
The COVID-19 pandemic emerged as one of the most significant global health crises of the 21st century. The pandemic had a profound and often devastating impact on the livelihoods of professional artists and creative workers. A sudden shift to digital platforms required a reimagining of a cultural sector that heavily relied on in-person experiences.
YBCA imagined the Artist Power Center (APC) as a digital platform to help artists and cultural workers navigate emergency relief and continue to build long-term careers in the wake of the pandemic’s paradigm shift. Working Group partnered with YBCA’s leadership team to bring their vision for the APC to life, considering the following goals.
Foundational Research
Build an understanding of the economic model for artists and how they connect with opportunities, and how they might leverage an app like the one YBCA wanted to build.
Creative Direction Development
Refresh and evolve a brand identity to resonate with both artists and patrons, for applications across product and marketing.
Core Product Design
Go from zero to one to see through a critical public launch on an accelerated timeline in accordance with city government plans.
Solutions
We worked with YBCA to translate a civic mandate into a real, usable platform, grounded in the needs of working artists and supported by thoughtful design at every layer. Our engagement spanned deep research, creative direction, and product design, all timed to align with a city-backed rollout and built to support long-term institutional goals.
To launch the Artist Power Center, we first needed to deeply understand the economic realities facing working artists, and the barriers they encountered when accessing resources. Our research included interviews, surveys, journey mapping, and prototyping to learn how artists discovered, evaluated, and acted on opportunities—and where those systems broke down.
Insights from this phase directly shaped the product experience, helping prioritize key features, channels, and terminology.
By mapping how artists discover, evaluate, and access resources, we surfaced urgent emotional and logistical realities, turning systemic friction points into core product strategy.
Insights
01
Start with what’s broken
We identified key moments where access to opportunity failed, then used those friction points as a roadmap for design.
02
Meet users where they are
We learned that artists often relied on informal word-of-mouth networks for opportunities, shaping how discovery and outreach were built into the platform.
03
Speak their language
Artists felt discouraged by confusing and technical terminology around grants, applications, and eligibility. Our research shaped a content strategy focused on clarity, encouragement, and transparency.
With a new platform and a new audience, YBCA needed to evolve its brand expression to build trust with artists while aligning with its civic mission. We refreshed the brand identity for digital use, created a bold and accessible design language, and developed visual assets that would resonate across both product and campaign materials.
This included a new color system, illustration style, and content templates that helped the APC feel distinct but connected to the YBCA ecosystem.
The brand had to speak to multiple audiences, be fit for a bold new platform, and anchored in longstanding values. We created a visual language that carried trust, clarity, and consistency across every touchpoint.
Insights
01
Resonance over polish
Artists responded more strongly to visual systems that felt human and grassroots than overly sleek design, which guided our creative direction.
02
Build with partners
We co-developed creative directions with internal YBCA teams and collaborators, ensuring shared ownership and long-term sustainability.
03
Design the handoff
We knew internal teams and partners would need to run with the brand—so we made sure it was easy to use, not just easy to look at.
On a short timeline aligned with city funding, we led the APC from zero to one—building the product from concept to public beta. In just a few months, we designed the platform architecture, prototyped flows, developed a modular UI system, and worked alongside YBCA’s dev team to support implementation.
We also delivered a launch kit of messaging, content templates, and onboarding tools to help the platform debut with clarity and confidence.
From platform architecture to launch toolkit, we helped turn vision into a working product on time and on mission.
Insights
01
Short runway, long view
We built a flexible architecture that allowed for fast rollout while anticipating future user and content expansion.
02
Launch is a team sport
We worked hand-in-hand with internal stakeholders, dev partners, and city collaborators to ensure the product met both technical and civic requirements.
03
Make it easy to show up
We prioritized intuitive UI and onboarding flows that respected artists’ time and energy, especially during moments of stress or uncertainty.
Outcomes
We created a mission-aligned platform designed and launched in months, helping artists access opportunity when it mattered most.
The Artist Power Center launched publicly in partnership with the City of San Francisco, connecting artists to emergency aid and long-term career resources. Our work helped YBCA build a scalable, sustainable platform rooted in artist needs—earning recognition from community organizations, city leadership, and funders.
The systems and strategy we delivered remain in use as YBCA continues evolving the APC into a core pillar of its civic engagement work.
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