Looking back and looking ahead

We’re 2 months and several elections into 2022. Before we go much further, we wanted to share some of our highlights and takeaways from the previous year, as well as 2 exciting tools we’ve been working on for election offices so far this year.


Looking back at 2021

2021 was a busy year at CCD. We brought on 5 full time staff members, 2 fellows, and 1 new advisory board member. We did 27 external presentations – appearing on podcasts, at conferences, and in university classrooms. We worked in 12 states on projects large and small.
Other highlights include:

  • Board member Katy Peters making a winning appearance on Jeopardy! in March
  • Celebrating the launch of the NYC Campaign Finance Board’s RCV website in May
  • Leading language access planning workshop in Michigan in July
  • Rewriting our organizational principles in November

Scroll through 54 things we did in 2021 and let us know on twitter @civicdesign what moments stand out to you!

When we finally had time to step back and look at all of our work, we saw 6 key lessons emerge. We’ll be taking these insights with us into 2022 (and beyond!). Read about what we learned in 2021.


So far in 2022 we have…

Released a template to make it easier for your office to (re)design forms

Last year, we published a workbook on how to make forms in our “sidewalk” style that makes it fast and easy to create both print masters and accessible, fillable forms from the same file.

Sketch of the CCD sidewalk style form.

The workbook focuses on the high-level design and language considerations of a form—how to organize the information, how to format the text so it fits better, how to use plain language, and how to make the forms accessible.

But we’ve also received a lot of requests for more technical information. So we’ve created an InDesign template for sidewalk style forms.

Download the template to begin adapting it to your own election office’s needs.

Join us on March 18 at 3pm ET for a Q&A about all things forms related. Register for the Zoom link.

Updated the civic icons and images collection on ElectionTools.org

The new updates include illustrations about maintaining safe distances, ranked choice voting ballot styles, more envelope styles, and different skin tones.

Panel of 3 illustrations from the updated civic icons collection. TAll of the hands have a darker skin tone. Image 1 shows a hand delivering a ballot to a dropbox. Image 2 shows a hand signing the oath on a vote-by-mail envelope. Image 3 shows a ballot being out inside of a ballot security sleeve.

Check them out, and start using them today!

As always, if you can’t find what you need, let us know by emailing hello@civicdesign.org and we’ll work with our creative partners at Rule 29 to customize the illustrations to your election needs.

This was originally published in our Civic Designing newsletter. Subscribe on Mailchimp to get election design tips delivered to your mailbox.