Business Development Bank of Canada
Climate Action Centre
Agency
Addison/SIA
The Client
The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) is a Crown corporation providing financing and advisory services to Canadian small and medium-sized businesses. Its mandate focuses on supporting growth, innovation, and long-term sustainability for entrepreneurs nationwide.
The Ask
BDC’s Climate Action Center set out to create a digital ecosystem that would educate and enable SMEs to take meaningful climate action. The challenge was to design a clear, engaging platform that delivered tailored content, practical tools, and solutions, helping businesses reduce their carbon footprint while encouraging measurable, real-world impact.
The Client
Led design direction for the Climate Action Center, developing a distinct visual language built on BDC’s existing brand while ensuring cohesion within the broader BDC.com experience. Worked closely with an internal BDC team in a hybrid role spanning design leadership and execution, guiding the project from early definition through delivery.
Early animation test
Building a solid foundation
We developed an interpolation method across the entire design, from the grid system and spacing to typography, creating a truly fluid system. By defining only the minimum and maximum values, everything in between is automatically determined based on the viewport size. This approach optimizes the layout, requiring minimal to no adjustments for different screen sizes.
Interpolated grid
Interpolated spacing system
Interpolated typography system
The typography choices adhered to the principles set forth in the master BDC brand guidelines.
The color palette followed the principles outlined in the master BDC brand guidelines, with further refinement of the rules to suit the specific needs of the Climate Action Center.
A hierarchy of image and illustration styles was established to differentiate specific categories. Four distinct levels were developed, ranging from highly conceptual to very literal representations.
For the highest level, called "Subtopics," a series of illustrative patterns were developed to represent each section, such as process optimization and transportation management.
For the second level, called "Actions," a series of pre-existing illustrative icons developed for BDC were utilized to represent each action.
For the third level, "Articles and Content," BDC's photo library was incorporated to support the creation of a variety of content and articles.
Finally, for the fourth level, "Resources," simple typography was employed to ensure clarity and a literal representation of the content.
With all these elements in our toolbox, we developed a large set of reusable components, fully functional and implemented in a way that allowed anyone to create a wide variety of layouts and pages without the need for new or custom components.
Putting it all together
By combining these various elements and components with a strong user experience and content strategy, we created an experience designed for rapid growth and easy expansion. This approach ensures scalability while maintaining a seamless and engaging user journey.
The Action Advisor is an interactive questionnaire tool designed to help users navigate and identify specific resources tailored to their business needs. By answering a series of questions, users are directed to relevant content, tools, and solutions that align with their unique challenges and goals.
A wide variety of page templates were created to align with the content strategy, featuring interactive widgets, deep-dive content, stats and charts, articles, and more. These templates are designed to accommodate a diverse range of content and enhance user engagement.