GOOD Company | Finding Home Online

Finding Home Online

Goodco — Fri, 29 May 2026 01:46:07 +0000

Finding Home Online

Reimagining Bethany’s online experience for future residents, donors, and employees.

Navigating seniors’ housing and care can be an emotional and potentially confusing process. Bethany—one of Western Canada’s largest non-profit seniors housing and care providers—needed to better help potential residents and their families through this process.

For many families, the search for seniors housing and care begins online. Bethany needed a website that could support people at this life stage by making information easy to access and clearly conveying what life in a Bethany community is like. The site also needed to better serve other audiences, including prospective employees and donors to Bethany Care Foundation.

Understanding the Journey

We began our work by undertaking a discovery process that included a comparison with industry peers’ websites, an audience analysis, and a content audit. These helped us articulate our project goals and begin to make clear the direction to take.

Simplifying the Experience

That started with streamlining the user journey and refreshing content. We rebuilt the site around only four primary content buckets presented in the navigation, based on our user base and each offering predictable pathways.

Information is now delivered through a clean design and an engaging, easy-to-understand mix of text, video, quizzes, and robust search, while dynamic feeds automatically surface contextual news. Clear, strategically placed CTAs guide users effortlessly toward next steps.

We incorporated a filtering system to offer an easier experience when exploring Bethany’s locations across Alberta. These filters present the different option categories that someone may be looking for—be it city, level of care, or specialized programs offered.

Designing with Empathy

Photography and short-form video now helps tell Bethany’s story in a way that is genuine and reflective of its communities. Throughout the site, Bethany’s key messages and caring language reinforces its values of community and care.

Accessibility informed our design decisions, from larger-than-average font sizes and colour contrast to iconography and navigation patterns, ensuring the site remains easy to use for older audiences. A soft interpretation of Bethany’s colours expressed through subtle pattern further reinforced the organization’s welcoming and caring approach.

Building for the Future

We simplified the site’s management by engineering an intuitive system that allows staff to easily update content and scale the site. As a back-end bonus, multiple legacy microsites sites were consolidated into this single login, reducing management overhead.

By balancing accurate, clear communication with empathetic design, Bethany now has a unified and distinct digital home that makes the transition to seniors’ living a little bit easier for its community.

View the site here.

Collaborator Credits:

Content Development: Bonnie Elgie PR

Photography: Neil Zee Photo Corp

Video: Kelly Brothers Productions

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2024 Year in Review

Goodco — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 22:47:44 +0000

2024 Year in Review

While we’ve now fully stepped in to the new year, we’re not finished looking back through the seasons of 2024, feeling pretty grateful for the interesting—and meaningful—projects we’ve been brought onside to support. Here’s a rundown of the highlights.

Winter & Early Spring: Bringing Winter Culture, and Art, to Life

We kicked off the year by helping bring Calgary’s beloved Chinook Blast to life once again with a fun tagline (“So Winterful!”), new promotional materials and a refreshed website that made navigating the downtown winter festival a breeze. Speaking of websites, we also launched a brand-new one for Calgary Arts Development, helping it better serve its diverse community while enhancing accessibility and usability. This site was a massive undertaking (you should have seen the site map!) and a collaborative effort with the CAD team. We took some design risks on this one, and we’re happy to say our client was supportive from the get-go.

Late Spring & Early Summer: Celebrating History, Youth Changemakers and the Future

After months of deep discovery, we unveiled the new brand for The Confluence Historic Site & Parkland (formerly Fort Calgary), celebrating the rich intersection of stories across time and cultures. This was a significant, meaningful project to many, and we were honoured to be a part of it. Shifting from history to up-and-coming: we also worked with Children First Canada on “The Future is Now! Awards”, a new initiative drawing attention to Canadian youth leading their peers and the country areas of climate change, reconciliation, mental health, and more. And finally, taking us into the future of sustainability, we launched the Turing brand and website, empowering this company to showcase how combining AI with human expertise can revolutionize efficiency and sustainability in water and landscaping operations around the globe.

Summer: Amplifying Urban Creativity

Summer was buzzing with creativity in Calgary. We once again teamed up with BUMP to design promotional materials for this urban mural festival and to introduce new features on their website, including mural tours. We also developed the look and feel for their inaugural Urban Art Conference, marking an exciting expansion for the festival’s influence on the local arts scene.

Late Summer & Fall: Supporting Local Efforts

By fall, we had either completed or were just beginning work with new Calgary non-profits focused on pressing social issues like food security or mental health: Flourish Alberta, YCC Food Collaborative, and GeShiDo Foundation are all taking new and different approaches to create social impact, and we’re proud to support their work.

We expanded on our work with senior-supporting organizations by beginning a new relationship with Bethany Care Foundation as they embark on building a state-of-the art long-term care residence in Calgary. (Throughout the year, we also continued partnering with Sage Seniors, Healthy Aging Alberta, and the Canadian Institute for Social Prescribing, all of whom are dedicated to improving quality of life for seniors.)

Throughout the Year: Celebrating Local Business Innovation

2024 was also a year of working with incredible local businesses. We designed fresh packaging for Ellie Bianca, a social enterprise in the beauty industry, helping them launch a new body wash product and gift bundles. We also developed a brand for Leeg, a fast-growing startup focused on connecting businesses with talent. Finally, we have loved collaborating with Common Digs—a social enterprise promoting ecological thinking through forest schools and community-based projects—on a new brand identity.

Looking Ahead: New Partnerships & Ongoing Relationships

As we begin this new year, we’re excited to dive into a new project with a long-standing architecture firm in Canada’s north, Taylor Architecture Group. We’re also pleased to renew our partnership with CAWST, the organization we branded ten years ago. And, of course, we’ll continue to work with the many amazing clients and partners we’ve been fortunate to collaborate with over the years.

We can’t wait to see what the year ahead holds!

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Where rivers and stories converge: Our design journey behind The Confluence rebrand

Goodco — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 21:00:08 +0000

Where rivers and stories converge: Our design journey behind The Confluence rebrand

Working on the rebrand for The Confluence Historic Site & Parkland was a profoundly meaningful experience, but one that presented unique design challenges: How would we create an identity that could bridge Indigenous histories with colonial legacies, and honour a complex past while helping to shape its future?

Formerly known as Fort Calgary: A story only partly told

The Confluence Historic Site & Parkland, formerly known as Fort Calgary, is located at the meeting point of the Bow and Elbow rivers. For centuries, it has been a place where narratives intersect—where Indigenous Peoples gathered long before the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) built their fort in 1875, and where the city of Calgary itself began to take shape. Yet, for far too long, the focus had been on only one part of the story—the colonial one.

While the NWMP and the establishment of modern Calgary are integral parts of this site’s history, a larger piece of the story was missing. The team at The Confluence recognized the need to expand the narrative and embrace the full depth and richness of this sacred place, leading to the decision to rebrand.

Collaborative journey: Engagement and strategy development

The rebranding process began with a comprehensive engagement phase led by Stormy Lake Consulting. Over 1,500 interested parties, including Indigenous communities, the RCMP, and local residents participated in workshops, consultations, surveys, and one-on-one discussions. This extensive engagement process was crucial in shaping the strategic direction and would serve as the foundation for the visual identity and all subsequent branding efforts.

A new name: Reflecting a broader narrative

As the strategy work progressed, it became clear that a new name was needed, as the existing name did not serve the broader purpose of representing the site’s multifaceted histories.

The new name—The Confluence Historic Site & Parkland—not only references the geographical confluence of the Bow and Elbow rivers but also reflects The Confluence’s role as a caretaker of the land and its stories. Also significant was the bestowal of the Blackfoot name I’táámito’táaattsiiyio’pi (Eeh-daah-mee-doh-daat-tsee-yoop), meaning ‘harmonious meeting place,’ further anchoring the site in its Indigenous roots and bringing long-overdue recognition of the land’s deep cultural legacy.

Cultural sensitivity: Finding common ground beyond symbolism

With the strategic foundation and new name in place, the design phase began. At first, the challenge appeared to be developing a visually compelling identity that authentically represented Indigenous cultures while also relating to an audience accustomed to colonial design norms.

These challenges were layered with significant complexities, yet the goal extended beyond merely avoiding risk. It had to result in a design that resonated with everyone, allowing individuals from all backgrounds to connect with the new identity—both now and into the future. Ultimately, it became clear that the site’s many histories and perspectives, each deserving recognition, could not be easily captured in a single visual expression.

At some point during the process, hearing a lyric from Nada Surf—’The stars are indifferent to astronomy, and all that we think we know‘—sparked a pivotal realization: The people who gathered on this land, regardless of what brought them here, were part of something that transcended their individual stories, cultural remnants, and the interpretations applied to them. The land, the rivers, the gathering of people, the passage of time—these things remained constant and indifferent to the narratives that surround them today.

This realization shifted the design approach away from relying on specific cultural associations and instead capturing the essence of the place itself—the enduring natural elements and shared human experiences that transcend cultural boundaries. It needed to reflect not the individual threads of history, but the underlying fabric that connects us all to this place. After a rigorous couple of months of exploration, the core identity components were finally completed.

A fluid visual identity: The Confluence of nature and humanity

The logo, a topographic view of the rivers’ confluence designed to resemble a fingerprint, became the foundation of the visual identity. It represents not only the physical landscape but also the metaphorical convergence of peoples, stories, and time. The wordmark features custom letterforms that connect and curve, echoing the flow of the rivers. It’s evocative while remaining legible, and connects to the logo to create a cohesive visual language. The colour palette, inspired by the area’s natural environment, reinforces the connection to the landscape.

The role of identity: A framework for connection

The visual identity spans multiple touch points, including interior and exterior signage, interpretive displays, printed materials, digital communications, and the overall visitor experience.

Reflecting the complexity of the site’s history, the new brand is more than the sum of its parts. It inspires connection and understanding, creating space for fresh narratives and fostering ongoing engagement with the site’s evolving story. It was our privilege and honour to help tell the story of such a significant place.

See more images from this project on our work page.

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2023 Year in Review

Goodco — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 23:31:39 +0000

Recognizing our wins in the everyday hustle can be a bit tricky, but as a team, we recently took a look back at 2023 and spotted some noteworthy themes, highlights and achievements.

Themes

While our focus remains on client work that is aligned with our values (working with change makers, community builders, problem solvers), there were distinctive themes to our eleventh year in business. Notably, a significant portion of our work came from cultural, tourism and community-building clients like Chinook Blast, Beltline Urban Murals Project (BUMP), Calgary Arts Development, and Fort Calgary.

A little surprising was how many of our projects fell under the umbrella of health and wellbeing. This encompassed initiatives related to mental health, a priority we’ve seen on the rise since the pandemic hit. We’ve enjoyed working with Converge (a national mental health collaborative) and were pleased to build a mental health resource website specific to what can be found in Cochrane, Alberta. (Quick fact: this was inspired by our previously created campaign and website, “See the Signs“, for the Bow Valley region in Alberta).

Additionally, through Healthy Aging Alberta, we came to deeply understand and then communicate social prescribing, a referral pathway that helps older adults be connected with services they need to live connected, healthy lives—and stay in their homes longer. Finally, we ventured into creating brands for small businesses like Vitality BioMed Ltd.and Burnaby Chiropractic, the latter of which emphasizes diversity and inclusion and a whole-body neurological approach to chiropractic care.

The last half of the year saw the commencement of long-term projects with two larger companies focused on technology to address social or environmental challenges. One of these, Turing (owned by Gradiant), is putting AI to use as it aims to reduce, reclaim and reuse water.

Highlights

No doubt, the best part of looking back was seeing the awesome range of services we’ve grown into and the tight bonds within our team and extended crew. While this has been building over the years—our capacity to deliver comprehensive services, including brand strategy, content development, copywriting, custom illustration, video, and animation, while upholding the excellence of our core design services—stands out prominently.

Despite the occasional “ugh” moments with completing RFPs, we snagged almost half of the proposals we tossed into the ring. And, we’re taking pride in some significant website projects, such as the new site for Flying Fish, a world-renowned creator of traveling exhibitions. Right now, we’re knee-deep in a massive—let’s be real—website for Calgary Arts Development and collaborating on a fresh brand for Fort Calgary. For the latter, we really delved into insightful conversations about the many histories of a geographically significant site and are excited to launch this new brand in 2024.

Helping the “Little Guys”

Continuing our tradition of offering pro-bono or discounted services, we were pleased to do so for several non-profits this year, including:

Calgary Booster Club

Calgary Vocal Festival

Canadian Commission for UNESCO

Children First Canada

Land’s End Ensemble

Luminous Voices

Yamnuska Wolfdog Society

It seems we’ve developed a keen interest in working with large cultural institutions and aspire to collaborate with more of them this year. And, we find ourselves invigorated by the potential of “good tech” to address global challenges, such as water restoration and food security.

Our mission remains as always—to work exclusively with those supporting goals of innovation, sustainability, and the creation of positive social impact. Being driven by a shared purpose and a commitment to doing great work makes it all so worthwhile!

We can’t wait to see what 2024 has in store.

Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility – Good Practices for Researchers

Goodco — Fri, 13 May 2022 14:54:40 +0000

Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility – Good Practices for Researchers

This toolkit gives researchers some practical ways to achieve an inclusive culture, free of racism and discrimination.

GOOD Company designed this pieces to abstractly remind the reader of all the shapes and colours that human come in. It was produced in both English and French, with social graphics to draw attention to it.

View the full publication on CCUNESCO’s website.

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Creating positive impact during trying times

Goodco — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 03:00:31 +0000

Creating positive impact during trying times

Calgary Arts Development is a non-profit, quasi-governmental arts advocacy and granting organization. For this project, they wished to highlight how they contributed to alleviating the negative impacts of COVID-19 on artists and arts organizations via distribution of funds. Our client also wished to offer detail on the broader arts advocacy work they do, including the acceleration of their equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility journey.

The decision was made to go beyond a digitally-optimized PDF report and straight to an HTML format. This was the case with the Accountability + Impact Report of 2020, created as an interactive micro-site with accompanying printed piece.

The primary audience for the report was city council (CAD’s shareholder) and the secondary audiences included the arts sector (grantees) and partners (including other city-building entities, such as Calgary Economic Development, Tourism Calgary, educational institutions).

We created a visual experience that nestles within the overarching visual identity we’d established for CAD some years ago while offering a distinct look and feel based on the addition of shades of pink to their palette. The micro-site and printed piece both bring numbers and graphs to life in a bold, engaging way by using animation (in the case of the digital version) and artists’ imagery within graphs. Working with CAD to gather relevant content, we also drew attention to the recipients of the funds by way of photography and stories that offer readers insight into the diversity of art projects and artists that the organization serves.

From an accessibility standpoint, the micro-site took into account high contrast colour combinations and integrates a plugin that is found at the top of every page, allowing the user to set accessibility preferences.

The accompanying printed piece was used as an overview and distributed to city council and other interested parties.

All and all, this project is a good demonstration of our ability to build on an existing brand, create engaging design that is appropriate, fresh, and inclusive, and build frameworks that allow for easy, intuitive organization of varying types of information.

See more images of this project in our Work section.

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Grow Your Good

Goodco — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 20:48:07 +0000

Grow Your Good

We created the Grow Your Good initiative to support those who share our values but may not be able to easily afford our services.

Past partnerships have included social enterprises just getting their start, civic engagement and advocacy groups, arts and cultural organizations, and organizations striving to solve environmental or social issues.

Tell us about the good you do and how we can help — highlighting your mission, and how you are working towards solving a problem or creating a positive impact.

The value of our free services is limited to 20 hours.
Depending on the scope of your project, it may be covered entirely by the award, or we may deduct it from the total cost, if agreed upon.
Work will commence once you approve a project estimate (if applicable).
As work on your project commences, our terms become applicable:

We manage design time (initial concepts and revisions) so as to allow for the best work at a lesser expense. The estimated time includes up to two sets of revisions. Additional sets of revisions will be charged at our rate of $125/hour. We will endeavor to keep you up-to-date on the time being put in as the project progresses.

We have the experience and ability to perform the services you need and will carry them out in a professional and timely manner. We will endeavour to meet all the deadlines set, though can’t be responsible for a missed deadline if you have been late in supplying materials or have not approved or signed off work on-time at any stage.

If, at any stage of the design and development process, either yourself or GOOD Company decides to terminate the project, either party has the right to cancel this contract. At this time, you’ll pay us in full for everything produced until that point. The GYG award would not apply to the hours already put in due to the project not being seen through to completion.

Charges for additional expenses, such as printing, writing services or web development are not included in this estimate.

You are entitled to all of the final design files once the project is complete. GOOD Company retains the right to withhold incomplete designs should our contract be canceled.

Two websites; many mental health supports

Gillian — Sat, 27 Nov 2021 15:40:23 +0000

Two websites; many mental health supports

While our mental wellbeing is something to be nurtured at all times, the pandemic has made it particularly important to bring attention to what we can do to prevent a mental health crisis.

Thankfully, a Bow Valley collective and the Calgary Women’s Emergency Shelter are diving into the subject. Launched just weeks apart, we worked with both to create online resources offering support in this area.

See the signs

The Bow Valley Wellness, Recovery & Preparedness Coalition originally came to be as a way to support the wellness of Bow Valley residents during challenging times, such as the flood of 2013. Working in collaboration with the committee and strategic consultants Stormy Lake, we created a campaign concept and marketing collateral—posters, postcards, print ads, video and social media assets—to drive the residents of Bow Valley to this website.

Through the strategic process, we came to understand that Bow Valley residents felt a strong connection to the beauty and landscape around them. So, to help our campaign resonate, visuals referenced this setting, and familiar highway and parks signs — with modified symbols and messages — to convey the feelings and thoughts of someone with a deteriorating mental state.

The website offers a quiz to help them establish where they sit on the spectrum of mildly stressed to being in crisis, educates on the pillars of mental health, and, most importantly, offers local resources for extra support.

You can see more about this campaign in our work section.

Helping men strengthen their lives

Earlier this year, we developed a visual identity for Men&, an initiative from the team at Calgary Women’s Emergency Shelter, with support from various community agencies.

The project was aimed at creating an online hub of trusted support, information, and resources for the complex mental and relational health challenges men face.

This website offers a Mensline that can be reached 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and a curated collection of content and tools to streamline access to a network of resources, care, and community that supports the evolution of practices that understand and support men better.

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A new website for a growing children’s advocacy charity

Gillian — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 21:30:35 +0000

A new website for a growing children’s advocacy charity

Children First Canada (CFC) is a national charitable organization working to improve children’s well-being by mobilizing an alliance of children’s charities, hospitals and researchers. Earlier this year, CFC tasked us with designing their new website.

CFC had grown rapidly and found that its website had not been able to keep up with the continuous stream of content—press releases, poll results, publications, and more. The mindset was “everything is important” but we knew it wasn’t sustainable to keep everything at the top of a page. We needed to shift the functionality of the site, as well as the user’s experience so that a user would be able to see what was important to them, as easily and quickly as possible.

Furthermore, all of this content needed to be made available in both of Canada’s official languages.

We carefully considered site structure: the content needed to be organized in such a way that diverse users could easily find what was relevant to them. It needed to be able to work for an ever increasing amount of content and not become cumbersome to navigate over time.

We created a Resources section in which resources could be tagged so that users could filter based on who they were or their need. We categorized content so that content tagged with them would feed into relevant sections of the site, ensuring the valuable content would always be found where expected.

The website can now toggle between French and English, and meets basic accessibility standards.

Learn more about this project in our work section.

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Realizing Possibilities

Chris — Fri, 17 Jul 2020 01:46:27 +0000

Realizing Possibilities

Thank you to Calgary Arts Development for entrusting us to bring this to life. A hefty publication with really just so much that happened in 2019 to report on! Here are a few spreads, but you can read the full report here.

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