Building an institution before it has a building.
- Client
- Institute for Christian Statecraft
- Industry
- Policy research institute
- Engagement
- Client work
- Delivered through
- Appalachia Digital
- Status
- Live
- Role
- Art Direction, Design System
- Stack
- Next.js, Turbopack, Static generation
Attribution — Their footer credits Appalachia Digital.
02
Problem
A nascent think tank, effectively one principal, needing to appear substantial enough that serious people would associate with it. Institutions are trusted for their apparent permanence, and a new one has none.
03
Insight
Legitimacy in this category is signaled by restraint and structure, not by volume. Three named programs with their own emblems and pages read as an institution. A list of interests reads as a blog.
04
Direction
The most deliberately art-directed piece in this set: dark-mode neoclassical, with a seal, program emblems, grand architectural photography, custom faces, and unusual amounts of whitespace for the category.
05
Execution
Eighteen routes covering three named programs, an insights section, events, an action arm, donations at tiered levels, and a small explainer layer built to be found by people searching the underlying terms.
06
System
Statically generated on a current toolchain, with the deepest information architecture of the non-featured set.
Routes
18
Observed in build
Named programs
3
Observed in build
Known open defects
1 — duplicate domain, no canonical
Observed in build
No founding date, staff count, fellows placed, publication count, or press citation is published. There is nothing to report and nothing is claimed.
Reflection
This is at secondary rather than featured for one specific reason. A second domain serves a byte-identical copy of the site with no canonical tag on either, and the sitemap points at the other domain’s URLs. The organization is competing with itself for its own name. It is a fixable configuration problem, but until it is fixed, leading a portfolio with this piece invites a reviewer to find it — and they should.