We were tasked with the website design and development for Atrocities Watch Africa, a crowdsourcing platform that relies on the contribution of information from the public, civil society and academics to provide a comprehensive picture of atrocities, past and present on the African continent. The aim of the website is to promote a culture of documenting history in Africa, in order to bring an end to and find redress for mass atrocities.

We were also briefed to design a logo for the website. From the start we knew that we had to create an impactful and thought provoking logo, one that would work well on screens of differing resolutions. We started with what we believed to be the most common screen resolution for most Atrocities Watch Africa users—mobile screens. We wanted a masthead style word mark, something that alluded to the reporting aspect of the site; but that wasn't too traditional or European in appearance. Our solution was to develop a condensed sans serif word mark with a bold red strike through the word “atrocities” to highlight the aims of the organisation.

Taking into account that Atrocities Watch Africa would host a large volume of user submitted content, our website design is easily navigable and searchable. We achieved this by implementing a faceted search function that enables users to filter information and intuitively narrow down their searches.

Visit the website: www.atrocitieswatch.org