The Challenge
Ace in the City is a youth outreach nonprofit serving South Minneapolis, originally founded as Ace Hoops — a basketball mentoring program. As the organization grew beyond basketball into broader community development, they needed a web presence that reflected who they’d become. The site had to connect with two very different audiences: donors and church partners who fund the work, and the young people and families in the neighborhoods they serve. The typical nonprofit template — stock photography, muted tones, a donate button — wouldn’t capture the energy and heart of this organization.
Approach
Working within an agency team under creative direction, I handled the illustration, visual design, and responsive frontend development. The core design decision was to build the entire visual identity around custom illustration. Every element — the cityscape header, the character figures, the location scenes, the donation icons — was hand-drawn to create a world that felt warm, specific, and unmistakably theirs.
The illustration style was deliberately inclusive and joyful. The characters represented the diversity of the South Minneapolis community without relying on photography that could feel staged or tokenizing. Hand-lettered headings gave each section its own voice while maintaining cohesion across the site.
Solution
The site was structured as a series of long-scroll pages, each built around alternating content bands with distinct color palettes — teal for mission and history, green for community and action, warm earth tones for the Juárez Mexico partnership. Parallax animation layered the illustrated cityscape and characters against the content, giving the site depth and movement as users scrolled.
Each page opened with an embedded video paired with illustrated framing and hand-lettered headings, setting the narrative tone immediately. The typography mixed custom hand-lettering for section titles with clean sans-serif body text — readable without losing personality.
The team section was a design challenge: how do you present real people within a heavily illustrated world without it feeling jarring? I framed the staff photos within illustrated polaroid-style containers surrounded by the character artwork, so the photography felt like windows into the real world rather than a break from the design language.
The donation section translated giving into tangible outcomes through illustrated icons — $50 provides a day of food, lodging, and transportation; $100 supplies arts and crafts materials; $250 provides materials for a “fiesta.” Making the impact visual and specific lowered the barrier to giving.
Results
The site was recognized as an Awwwards Site of the Day, validating the approach that a nonprofit site can be joyful and illustrative without sacrificing credibility or usability. The visual language I developed became a core part of Ace in the City’s brand identity, extending into their print materials, social media, and community communications. The illustrated style gave them something no stock-photo nonprofit site has — instant recognition.