Introducing The Marc O Template for Squarespace
“The future is unwritten. And we, all of us, will be the authors of that future.”
On May 18, 2020, I had a get-to-know-you phone call with Marc O’Brien, who had recently co-founded an amazing membership community, Climate Designers, with the mission of training every designer in every industry to design for climate change.
Marc and I would go on to become close friends and colleagues and one of the few people I kept in touch with during some of the darkest moments of the last few years. In addition to creating strategy for Climate Designers and Marc inviting me to give feedback to his Climate Design students at California College of the Arts, we would spend two years brainstorming ideas on everything from our career trajectories to leadership skills to travel tips.
In more ways than one Marc has inspired me to keep on keepin- on. For example, I find myself returning time and time again to a post he wrote, on Medium about being a Climate Designer , to remind myself that while changing culture feels heavy and exhausting, it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom - in fact - it shouldn’t be - not if we actually want to see things change.
I encourage you to read the Medium post I mentioned above and to follow Marc via his newsletter, Generator, on LinkedIn. Trust me, you want to be a part of what he is doing!
To honor Marc and the beautiful and powerful ways he shows up for our planet by helping change how we all think about saving it, I created the MARC O template.
This template is design forward and full of images of people who are smiling, laughing, dancing, and often covered in glitter. I used the Collections Carousel from Will Myers to create a custom Resources page that highlights Blog posts, Podcast episodes, Member profiles, and Upcoming events.
It also includes Will’s Blog and Event Plugins, which offer multiple unique ways to create an individual post or event, plus the superstar Pop Up Anywhere plugin that limits the number of hops a user has to go through to do what they want to do - aka purchase something or send a contact form to you!
Using Will’s plugins means you’re website has a custom design look and feel, without that custom designer price tag. And don’t worry if you don’t have a ton of experience with code - it’s all done-for-you and my tutorials/instructions make it super easy for you to update if you want or need to.
But what’s super unique about this template is it’s emphasis on bright, design-forward colors, optimistic and fun stock photos, and the fat, funky font.
Even if you choose not to keep this exact visual scheme for your own site, the Marc O template will remind you to focus on the unexpected and optimistic side of changing the world.
Here are some ways you can use visual elements to change the narrative:
If you are trying to reframe how people are currently thinking about/approaching a problem, start with the colors/fonts you would expect to see and shake it up. On the MARC O template, for example, I still used green, blue, and purple - colors commonly found on eco/climate/planet focused websites - just in shades that are unexpected and louder.
Also, impact-focused brands often use big, dramatic, and foreboding fonts to emphasize the urgency of their work. For this template, I still went big and dramatic, but chose BIG SEXY SANS, from Tropical Type to shake things up and mix the fun with the dramatic.
PRO TIP: Don’t be afraid to get loud with your colors and fonts. Sometimes the energy of your site can say even more than the words.
ADHD TIP: When you need creative inspiration, go to the websites of A TON OF brands that are in your space and take screenshots of the colors and fonts they are using or save them to a Pinterest Board. Looking at a lot of different options at once will help your ADHD brain focus on the ones that speak more loudly to you.
LEARN MORE: The quote at the beginnig of this post is written on the front sleeve of the Know Your Rights 7" single, which was released in 1982. Although there’s no technical record of Joe Strummer saying these exact words, they are no doubt an encapsulation of his philosophy regarding activism and social justice, as evidenced by the 2007 documentary (about him), The Future is Unwritten and other tributes to his work, such as this mural in NYC.
