Good design keeps ballot envelopes moving

May 27, 2026

A mail ballot envelope has a lot to accomplish — here's what it takes to design one that works for voters and for USPS.A mail ballot envelope has a lot to accomplish — here's what it takes to design one that works for voters and for USPS.

We’ve updated our Civic Images Library. Ready, set, illustrate!

August 11, 2022

Check out recent updates to our civic images library, available for free on electiontools.org.

The USPS wants your help to improve ballot processing

July 27, 2022

Send samples of your ballot materials to USPS. It helps you catch errors, and helps USPS improve vote by mail processes for election offices everywhere.

Making Democracy Robust with 100% Voter Turnout

June 30, 2022

There's a lot of work that needs to be done to achieve 100% democracy in the US. Civic Design has a part to play in that work.

QR codes and short URLs get voters to information quickly

June 14, 2022

QR codes and short links are two easy to use tools that can help voters find specific pages on your website quickly/

Don’t miss these opportunities for election officials

April 29, 2022

2 upcoming opportunities for election officials: join the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence and attend the Democracy Fund State Association Conference.

Ballot questions are hard to understand. Here are 6 ways to fix them.

April 19, 2022

Ballot questions give voters an opportunity to have a say in the way their government functions. But all too often, voters feel confused when they encounter them.

Speed up form design with our new InDesign template

March 25, 2022

Our new InDesign template makes it fast and easy to create print masters and accessible, fillable forms at the same time.

Cover: Creating accessible forms for print + PDF

Looking back and looking ahead

March 2, 2022

Highlights and lessons learned in 2021, and 2 tools we're excited to share with election offices in 2022.

What we learned in 2021

February 28, 2022

Updates on our research and other work in 2021 (and how we are carrying this work forward in 2022)!

54 things we did in 2021

February 25, 2022

Take a scroll through what we did this year.

Five reasons to learn about design in election administration!

December 10, 2021

Want to be an election designer? This is your chance to learn what it takes.

If a legal right is not readable, is it really a right?

October 29, 2021

Too often, good legal rights are obscured by legal text written for lawyers. That made us think: if the people who need this information can’t read and understand it, is it really a right?

Birthday reflections

September 28, 2021

As we celebrate our 8th birthday, we're looking back at 8 of our favorite projects.

Number 8 candle on top of a cartoon cake

Short stories from overseas voters

June 25, 2021

17 Americans living—and voting—abroad and their challenges figuring out how to vote from wherever they live.

Center for Civic Design Research Report - Updates from the front line of civic design research

Attention-grabbing style: typography to grab (and hold) your reader’s attention

April 15, 2021

Typography can help - or hurt - your desire to convey important information to voters. We reviewed the available research on 4 typography choices. Here's what we found about bold, underline, italics, and all caps.

Now is the time to update your forms

March 25, 2021

Improve forms and other notices to voters during the off-cycle by making them official yet friendly, highlighting time-sensitive information, and using plain language

3 strategies to improve vote-by-mail signature forms

January 27, 2021

3 strategies to simplify signature forms and create a more successful experience voting by mail.

2020, the year of decades

January 20, 2021

In a chaotic year, we designed envelopes voting by mail, and so much more.

What to do about results: set expectations with explanations

October 26, 2020

Communications tips to help voters understand election results reporting

Designing ballot cure forms that invite voters to act

October 22, 2020

What we learned from testing different styles of cure forms with voters.