A couple years before the launch of the fantastic organizing guide with the same name, we helped launch an organization called Indivisible, dedicated to changing the dialogue around government from “I hate those bastards” to at least “oh, I can see why this is not an entirely terrible idea.”

During a brainstorming session with the client, we were struggling to identify a centerpiece for their website that could simultaneously draw people in, make the case for government, and get visitors to give us their emails. No small task. Different from a lot of pro-government organizations, we had landed on a cheekier tone of voice for this one, and we wanted to showcase that as well.

But we kept bumping into the fact that we had to assume that most people’s baseline viewpoint is that government is a totally dysfunctional, awful beast with two heads (and those heads happen to be Paul Ryan’s and Mitch McConnell’s).

What if we use that? Like judo?

I love the process of solving problems as a group, on the fly. In this case, the solution I came up with was to use the prevalent cynicism about government to our advantage. Like in judo, where you leverage your opponent’s force to your advantage. (Yeah, I googled that.)

So we took the idea of a survey, starting with a simple question: Did government help you today? But rather than looking for positive responses, the entire experience was built upon the assumption that people would enjoy telling us forcefully just how much government had not helped them. And then the judo ensued…





In addition to the quiz, we created Indivisible’s logo, identity, and website. The very talented Lauren Ruggeri was lead designer on this project.


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I’m free for some project work

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