Now Matters Now

Uniting to Prevent Suicide

Now Matters Now is a nonprofit transforming how people access mental health support. They provide completely free, online coping skills and peer-led support groups for people experiencing suicidal thoughts, emotional distress, or mental health challenges. Their approach combines authentic, lived-experience storytelling with evidence-based Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) coping skills, proven to be the most effective treatment for suicidal people. Our challenge was to create an identity and website that embodied both scientific credibility and human connection. The new logo and brand holding shapes are slightly imperfect and ever-evolving, being reminiscent of a human touch. Vibrant colors and full-color imagery replace the somber tones often associated with mental health, ensuring the site feels hopeful and encouraging. Every design decision reinforces the organization’s core values, real people, real stories, real choices, and real solutions.

A Digital Safe Space

The website is designed as a welcoming, intuitive platform where users can easily access life-saving skills whenever needed. A custom accessibility panel ensures an inclusive experience. Personal stories from the Now Matters Now community, who all have lived experience, are woven throughout the site and shared in free online peer support meetings. Authentic photography and videos from the community replace impersonal stock imagery, reinforcing a sense of connection and trust. The result is a digital experience that is both deeply human and scientifically sound.

Understanding the Person in Need

Through our research process we learned that it was imperative to make design decisions based on specific physical and emotional states of our visitors. Some people experiencing emotional distress may also be experiencing impairments in color perception as well as a reduced visual and reading cognition. Understanding this, we stripped away extraneous information and designed the interface to include in-page navigation elements to help guide and orient, instruction blocks with lots of space to help isolate text information, and vibrant, high-contrast colors. Functionally, the visitor can modify the site to their accessibility needs, and can quickly access emergency help resources with simple, highlighted, fixed navigation.

Ongoing Strategy

Though Now Matters Now has been in existence for nearly a decade, their model radically transformed in 2024, coinciding with the launch of their newly refreshed brand and website. They are in a period of rapid growth, building the largest, most comprehensive online resource for DBT skills and recovery storytelling, and scaling their peer-led, people-powered mental health groups, to one day become as ubiquitous and accessible as AA, available 24/7. We continue to work closely with Now Matters Now to strategize communications, partnerships, and actively fundraise, responding to their growing needs.

Client: Now Matters Now
Era: 2013 - Ongoing
Type: Identity, Digital, Strategy
  • Principals: Michael Ellsworth, Corey Gutch
  • Creative Direction: Michael Ellsworth
  • Identity Design: Òscar Viñas
  • Interactive/UX Direction: Corey Gutch
  • Interface Design: Òscar Viñas
  • Web Development: Shaun Kardinal
  • Research and Strategy: Raya Leary
  • Account and Project Management: Molly Derse
Visit Site

If you or someone you know is feeling suicidal or emotionally “on fire,” visit Now Matters Now for immediate assistance resources and to learn skills to help through the crisis.