Design Review
Artifact info
Title:

Pro-Social Market Economy: Style Direction & Visualization Strategy

Engagement:

Pro-social Market Economy - Brand & Website

Client:

Jan Pfister

Meeting Date:
June 24, 2026
Next Meeting Date:
July 9, 2026
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July 7, 2026
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June 30, 2026
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People
Jan Pfister
James Redenbaugh
Artifact Image
Meeting Summary

Workflow & Engagement Approach

Jan opened by clarifying his preference around creative production: he'd rather provide conceptual input and let James and team execute on image sourcing and visual development, given his demanding schedule (00:17). He emphasized budget isn't a constraint — he wants to invest more in the homepage to get it right.

James confirmed this works well, noting the team can find imagery in cohesive styles that complement each other (00:56). They aligned on a working order: settle the broad style and color direction first, then move into specific design features, with Jan's reference papers to come later.

🎨 Style Direction & Visual Language

Imagery Philosophy

The team discussed a hybrid approach to visuals (01:48). They want to avoid an overly "stocky" feel while still leveraging the right photography and video where it adds dimensionality. James outlined his approach: use real photography for things like landscapes, mountains, and Earth imagery where authenticity matters, and AI-generation for architectural spaces, human arrangements, mood, and color where human-created scenes are needed.

Color Palette Direction

Jan shared key feedback from his team meeting: too much green risks signaling "green ideology" (11:03). The team leaned toward bluish tones as more entrepreneurial and business-appropriate, with green reserved for specific contexts like planetary sustainability sections. He also flagged that yellowish undertones in earlier explorations felt heavy and lacked freshness — he wants bright, clean backgrounds especially on the business side.

Direction crystallized around:

  • Bright, uniform backgrounds across the design
  • Blue as a primary tone, with red and gold accents
  • Selective green only where sustainability is the topic
  • Clear, straightforward fonts prioritizing legibility
Font Pairing for Scholarly vs. Business

A central question emerged around how to differentiate the scholarly and business sides without the two pages feeling disintegrated (13:00). James proposed using a serif font for scholarly headlines and sans serif for business headlines, while keeping body fonts consistent to maintain visual unity. Tags and label fonts would also stay consistent across both.

Jan suggested exploring a classic typewriter or Times New Roman feel on the scholarly side to evoke academic conference aesthetics — dry, typeset, paper-like — in contrast to the colorful, direct, practitioner-facing business side (30:17).

Style Combination

After reviewing multiple style directions, the team converged on mixing elements: the business side treatment from the "relational field" direction (with blue/red color and clean font) paired with the scholarly side treatment from "fragile under pressure" or a similar typeset-feeling option (27:07). James confirmed mixing left/right pairings across style sets is possible.

🌀 Layered Visualization Concept

Five Scales & Seven Performance Domains

James presented two foundational frameworks as visualization candidates (06:00):

  1. Five Scales of Relationship — individual, group, organization, market, planetary
  2. Seven Performance Domains — financial, compliance, sustainability, well-being, resilience, agility, societal effects

Both could be stacked, overlaid, or animated to show paradigm transition (with dark/old on left moving to bright/new on right).

Making Abstractions Concrete

Jan's consistent feedback: the visualizations are cool but too abstract — practitioners arriving at the page need to see immediately what it's about without heavy cognitive work (33:00). The planet illustration (depleted → regenerative) was singled out as the right level of concreteness and clarity. Other scales need similar grounding with recognizable symbols — people, groups, structures — while staying sophisticated enough to avoid feeling like a children's illustration.

Three-Layer Homepage Animation

James proposed focusing the homepage attention-capturing animation on three concrete layers rather than illustrating everything (38:14):

  • Planet at the base — moving from depleted to regenerative
  • Individual at the center — moving from isolated to connected
  • Organization/system structures on the periphery — moving from rigid grid to fluid, interconnected
Identification as the Core Narrative

Jan articulated the deeper conceptual thread the visualization should communicate (41:06): the difference between paradigms is where the individual identifies. In the old paradigm, the individual identifies with self or immediate team — making decisions at the cost of larger systems. In the new paradigm, the individual identifies with successively larger groups (organization, market, planet) as part of themselves, dissolving the trade-offs. The animation should make this identification shift visible across scales.

Performance Domain Animations

For the seven performance domains, James described how each could animate meaningfully — not just an overlay swap, but actual functional change (well-being's jagged graph leveling out, resilience shifting from shattered to flexible, agility from linear to an infinity loop, societal effects from walled off to radiating).

[technology="Parametric Geometric Interfaces"]

Terminology Refinement

Jan flagged that "what is measured" risks framing the site as a performance measurement tool rather than a management framework (43:00). He proposed reframing as "effects on performance dimensions" to clarify that measurement is one part of a broader management approach.

📅 Cadence & Next Steps

The team agreed to a tighter weekly rhythm ahead of Jan's three-week absence beginning August 13th (45:32). Meetings will run Tuesdays and Fridays at 14:15 for the next two weeks, with James preparing a six-week proposal outlining the workflow and bringing more of his team in. James feels closer than ever to a clear style direction and will flesh out the strongest candidate for testing in context.

Next meeting will focus on style guide refinements and animation storyboard developments (47:05).

Action Items

Jan Pfister

  • Share recently published academic paper on academic freedom with James (49:13)
  • Provide reference papers and documents to support design and content work (04:58)
  • Attend twice-weekly check-ins (Tuesdays/Fridays at 14:15) through August 13th (46:39)

James Redenbaugh

  • Flesh out the strongest style direction (business side from "relational field" paired with a scholarly typeset treatment) and apply it in context for review (44:10)
  • Refine the layered homepage animation around three concrete layers — planet, individual, and organizational systems — illustrating the identification shift across scales (41:06)
  • Develop more concrete, symbolic graphics for the five scales and seven performance domains, replacing abstract treatments with recognizable elements (39:53)
  • Update terminology from "what is measured" to "effects on performance dimensions" (43:51)
  • Take ownership of image and video sourcing, blending real photography (landscapes/Earth) with AI-generated imagery (architectural and human scenes) (00:17)
  • Draft a six-week workflow proposal outlining team involvement and weekly check-in structure (44:10)
  • Prepare style guide tweaks and animation storyboard updates for Friday's session (47:05)
Relevant Initiatives

Brand Design

Priority: 
High
Size: 
S
Planning Stage

Website Design & Development

Priority: 
High
Size: 
M
Planning Stage

Homepage Animation Development

Priority: 
High
Size: 
M
Planning Stage
Transcript