Hello there!

And just like that, Ponder turned three! It's wild how on the one hand it still feels like we’re figuring out the basics, while on the other hand many things feel quite matured by now. Just recently we were wondering: What’s the appropriate label at 3 years old? We’re too old to be “just founded” but far from “established” — Are we entering the awkward teenage years of the company lifecycle?

But labels aside: Earlier this week we had a little celebration with many of the lovely people that were part of this journey so far, from clients to former teammates and like-minded studios. It was a lovely evening with a lot of good chats, you can find some more impressions over here.

⚽ Currently at Ponder: Increasing female representation in the sport industry

Did you know that not even 3% of leadership positions in German Football are female — and a mindblowing 0% in Basketball? The League is an organisation that aims to change this absurdity. They increase visibility and representation of women and underrepresented groups in the sport business through meetups, knowledge sharing and consulting. As they are currently expanding from Hamburg to multiple cities in Germany, they asked for our support do rework their digital touchpoints … which we happily did! The final result is not live yet, but will be in the next few weeks, so stay tuned for more updates on this!

🇺🇦 Fundraiser Update: Refining rahrah’s branding

We might need a little context here: When Russia started the war in Ukraine, we launched a fundraiser raffle to support the Ukraine LGBTQI Emergency Appeal and Bridges Over Borders. The winner of that raffle was Afra, the founder of Berlin-based company rahrah – they produce unique 3D-printed modular jewellery out of plant-based plastic. So we came together to understand how Ponder could best help her, and we can finally share the result of that collaboration: After analysing the existing design elements, we refined the brand attributes, defined a bold new design language, logotype and social media content strategy. You can find some impressions in this Post on Instagram – and on rahrah’s channels over the next weeks and months.

And while the news cycle is focussing on other areas right now, the situation in Ukraine is still a humanitarian disaster. So if you can, consider donating: LGBTIQ Ukraine Emergency Fund

⚡ Fighting fossil fuels by strengthening e-mobility – extended director’s cut

We finally found the time to write a full case study about our work for electrive, the leading B2B news platform around everything e-mobility. This publication had grown organically for over 13 (!) years, so there was quite some digging involved, but as Juliane Below (Head of Sales) put it:

“When we started working with Ponder, we had absolutely no idea how deep we would have to dive into the electrive DNA. But we trusted their experience and that worked out very well.”

You can find the full case study on our website, go have a look if you want to learn how we tackled this project and how this collaboration is still going on today.

More things!

Ahhhh too many things are happening, here’s a rapid fire of things we just can not not mention:

• Mansi Gupta published Women Centric Design, “a toolkit for impact practitioners to build products, services & systems that center women” – learn more about it here!
• German design magazine PAGE wrote about our work for Bündnis 90 / DIE GRÜNEN – go read it here!
• We facilitated a multi-day Ideation Sprint with Xing – and shared some impressions here.
• The Data to Policy Navigator just got recognised as a Digital Public Good – which is – as Alena Klatte (AI & Data Manager, Chief Digital Office @ UNDP) puts it – “A huge step forward for our mission to escalate the adoption of data-driven insights and solutions for human-rights centred policy making worldwide”. Still one of our favourite projects, read more about it here!
• Our co-founder Moritz wrote about his perspective on the recent AI hype – read it in German or English!

One thing to listen to

“Männer, die die Welt verbrennen” (DE): An amazing episode of the Let’s Talk Change Podcast with journalist and author Christian Stöcker on the striking similarities that become apparent when you look at the individuals responsible for the biggest harm in the world. Depressing, but very much worth the listen

A new perspective for you

Over the last years, the design industry made quite some progress when it comes to accessibility in our digital products – but we still mostly focus on the “big obvious” aspects: Users who might have impaired vision, customers that might use a wheelchair, etc. One important aspect that is easily overlooked, is neurodiversity. The Neurodiversity Design System is a great resource to help change that. Even if you are not working in Design we definitely recommend having a quick look, you will learn something. The collection of neurodivergent user archetypes are a great starting point!

Have a great start to June! ☀️ Peter

PS: You know the game – but seriously: If you feel someone from your network might benefit from this newsletter or should get to know us, we’d appreciate you making the connection! 💖