Airlines for America represents leading US airlines across policy, research and industry advocacy. As the organisation evolved, its digital platform had become harder to manage and less effective at serving the range of audiences relying on it.

The challenge was not simply to refresh the website. It was to create a more flexible digital experience that could communicate complex information clearly, support changing organisational priorities and remain useful over time.

Working with the wider team, I helped shape the redesign through discovery, UX, information architecture and visual design

Before moving into interface design, we needed to understand how the organisation worked, what different audiences needed and where the existing platform was creating friction.

Discovery and UX review helped reveal that the problem was broader than visual design. The content structure had become difficult to navigate, internal needs had changed, and the existing experience no longer reflected the breadth of the organisation’s work.

That shifted the focus from redesigning pages to reconsidering how information should be organised and communicated.

A major part of the work involved improving information architecture.

The platform needed to support policy content, research, industry updates and campaign material without making the experience feel fragmented or overwhelming. Early wireframes explored clearer hierarchies, more predictable navigation and page structures that could accommodate different types of content.

The goal was to make information easier to find without flattening the complexity of the organisation itself.

The platform needed to work beyond a single launch.

Rather than treating each page as a one-off design, the experience was developed around adaptable layouts and reusable patterns that could support different communication needs over time.

This gave the organisation more flexibility to respond to new priorities, publish varied content and evolve the platform without repeatedly returning to first principles.

Once the structure was established, the visual language helped bring consistency across the platform.

A restrained design approach kept the focus on content while improving legibility, hierarchy and accessibility. Components and layouts were designed to feel contemporary without competing with the organisation’s message.

The result was a system that felt clearer, more coherent and better suited to the serious nature of the content.

The final concepts combined information architecture, UX and visual design into a more flexible digital experience.

The redesign gave external audiences a clearer route through complex information while giving internal teams a stronger foundation for publishing and maintaining content as the organisation continued to evolve.

This project reinforced that digital products can become outdated even when they still function technically.

As organisations change, the way they communicate, publish and serve their audiences changes too. The most valuable part of this redesign was not the visual refresh. It was creating a platform that better matched the organisation it had become, rather than the one it had been designed for.

In 2022 NJI was awarded One Gold & One Silver MUSE Award for Airlines for America’s fully redesigned website project. NJI won a Gold MUSE Award in the Association Website category and a Silver in the Website category.

Agency: NJI , Creative Direction: Kara Mask, Art Direction: Zakk Waleko Designers: Jenna Patrick & Charlotte Nasworthy, Product design: Jenna Patrick Development: Claudio Meiro, https://www.airlines.org/