Designing for Urgency: How to Communicate Complex Problems Clearly
When your organization works on high-stakes issues like climate change, restoring ecosystems, and regenerative economics, the need to communicate clearly isn’t just a design challenge—it’s essential to your impact.
Too often, vital work is buried under dense language, academic formatting, or endless bullet points. The result? Eyes glaze over. Impact gets lost. And opportunities to engage key stakeholders—funders, collaborators, and communities—slip by.
At Brand Intelligence, we specialize in partnering with purpose-driven organizations to tell complex stories with clarity and purpose.
Why Complexity Fails to Connect
Big ideas don’t scare people—confusion does.
When your audience has to work hard to understand your message, they may assume it’s not for them. The cost of inaccessibility isn’t just missed comprehension—it’s missed funding, missed alliances, and missed momentum.
Three Strategies That Work
1. Simplify, but don’t dumb down
Lead with the core insight. Avoid technical framing up front. Move from the universal to the specific.
2. Structure the story
People need signposts. Use clear sections, headlines, and visuals to show what matters—and why.
3. Visualize the meaning, not just the data
Charts and infographics should illuminate, not decorate. Ask: What insight do we want the reader to walk away with?
A Better Way to Communicate
From bold climate plans to water purification technologies and regenerative economic models, we help our clients communicate breakthrough solutions in ways that drive real impact—moving people from awareness to action.
Because urgent work requires clarity and purpose.
Need help making your message land? Let’s talk.
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Above: We designed the cover for A Global Call to Action by Peter Bunyard and Rob de Laet—the foundational text behind Cooling the Climate. The book outlines a pioneering, science-based plan to restore and protect the Amazon Rainforest, the planet’s most vital land-based system for cooling and water regulation.
The material is dense, urgent, and grounded in ecological systems thinking. Our task was to distill that complexity into a suite of clear, compelling communications assets:
• a book cover
• a global communications plan
• a website narrative
• a one-page website launch overview
• a press release
• a one-paragraph social media summary
• and a one-sentence message of purpose: “An Accelerated Plan to Revive the Biosphere and Cool the Planet—Together.”
This is the work we do: bringing clarity, consistency, and purpose to complex ideas—so they can move the world forward. Our mission is simple but powerful: to amplify the voices and efforts of clients working toward positive change. By aligning our expertise and values with critical issues, we believe we can help shape a better future for all.