Actra Fraternal Benefit Society

Main Website

When it came time to re-design the AFBS website, in addition to the UX and UI demands of a gigantic website, Overdrive needed to create an aesthetic that reflected the creative spirit of the user/Members. The site needed to express a sense of friendliness, accessibility, and dependability—but above all, it needed to be easy to use. With a hierarchy that prioritized finding information easily, the search field was positioned prominently on the home page.

We used an illustrative type style in headers to infuse personality, as well as background videos that featured Members pursuing their craft. An additional requirement was to express AFBS’ desire to promote financial literacy amongst its Members. A number of interactive tables were designed to give Members personalized tools to visualize their financial investments.

Reaching and providing orientation to new Members was a key requirement, so one of the most important sections on the website was the 8 step “Set up your Profile” featuring the organization’s Orientation video.

Website

The site is gigantic and detailed. Every possible approach to control navigation, hierarchy, and readability was used including last but not least, colour coding.

Associate Sites

In addition to AFBS’ main focus, providing extended health insurance and investment products to ACTRA and Writers’ Guild of Canada Members, AFBS has branched out providing the same insurance services they excel in, to creative people who are not members of ACTRA or WGC. We developed an additional website to service these clients.

Associate Sites

AFBS services two different markets, one for writers through the Writer’s Coalition Programme and one for artists and performers through the Arts and Entertainment Plan. Because each market has a unique identity, AFBS wanted to provide each with their own website. The information required for those sites was essentially identical, however. Therefore we created one template, that could be customized with market specific images, and a colour scheme that reflected the specific plan.

Although the look and feel of the Associate sites are intended to be part of the AFBS family, they are more retail oriented. WCP and A&E provide pay per service products while AFBS Members receive their extended health plans as part of their ACTRA or WGC contracts.

Photography

Because AFBS is both owned by and serves performers and writers it was important to depict actual Members. Actors and writers wanted to see themselves in marketing materials and their website, not stock models.

Photographing a broad representation of the Membership practicing their craft was a complicated undertaking. Actors and Screenwriters are finely attuned to visuals that are forced or staged, and we knew we needed to use care in the way we depicted Members. We decided to use an editorial photography approach, shooting real life on the fly, without additional lighting.

Thousands of photographs were shot, which all had to be reviewed and the selects often required photoshopping. Moreover, all the subjects needed to be credited, which required meticulous record keeping.

SFS

Summarized Financial Statements

The challenge for any Financial Statement is that the span of time between the arrival of final copy and the delivery of files ready for print is notoriously short. We designed the AFBS SFS based on unfinalized details. Although the design is meant to reflect the aesthetic of the website, they are two distinct entities. Our brief: design a SFS that was elegant, but above all simple to read. Accounting practices always trumped what seemed to be logical design rules. White space was balanced with keeping the SFS to a manageable size. The result was a SFS template that could be reused in subsequent years.

Newsletters

AFBS regularly needed to inform their Members of the status of their investments, which required a clean and engaging format that could be easily updated from month to month, and also be animated for the online versions.

Other regular correspondence included an annual Insurance Statement and postcards for a variety of purposes from AGM reminders to RRSP deadlines.

AGM

The Creating Possibilities DAR featured prominently in the 2013 Annual General Meeting. The Creating Possibilities video, in particular, was a highlight and subsequently used as a profile builder for AFBS at the 2013 UBCP Annual General Meeting.

The theme of Creating Possibilities was well received for the way it integrated the ability of AFBS to help Members make their own possibilities. Financial security and knowing health insurance is taken care of left members with the freedom to explore their own ambitions.