The New York Historical–
Women’s stories stand to save American classrooms

Role: ACD Copy / Services: Identity, Writing

Overview

New York Historical had already built an online education arm to bring the museum's work into more classrooms. Then the news cycle made the gap impossible to ignore: textbooks weren't just incomplete on women's history, they were failing outright. Women & the American Story became the answer — real historical context and first-hand accounts, with women's stories treated as the primary source instead of a sidebar.

Strategy

Trust is the product. A resource asking teachers to replace what's in their textbook can't read like a museum microsite. It has to read like something built for exactly this purpose, with the authority to back it up. The strategic work wasn't about finding a clever hook — it was about earning the right to be taken seriously in a classroom. That meant a voice as rigorous as the scholarship behind it and as clear as the students who'd eventually read it.

Verbal Identity

The site needed to stop feeling like a web property and start feeling like a source teachers could put their name behind. Every word — voice, tone, site strategy — was built around that shift: measured where the subject demanded gravity, direct where a classroom needed clarity, and never performative about either.

MANIFESTO
History is only as impactful as it is objective.

Only as moving as it is honest. Only as informative as it is whole.
The history books reveal more than the prejudices of the past.
It is in their gaps where they fail our students.

Because you can only know what you are taught. And you can only teach what you have access to.

So the burden to fill those gaps has fallen to teachers.
The ones who stay late, dig deeper, know their students deserve the truth.

Because the stories of women are there. We know. We’ve collected them.

Women & the American Story was created for those teachers.
To fill those gaps in history classrooms. Freely and fearlessly.

Re-contextualizing the past through the lives and legacies of women within the social, political, legal, and cultural systems of their times.

Because history that does not acknowledge women’s situations,
actions and accomplishments is, by definition, not a full history.

When we tell their stories, we don’t just empower teachers.
We power the next generation of women.

Digital Experience

Evolving a curriculum platform teachers across the country rely on into the digital home it always deserved. From content hierarchy and navigation to color and typography, the new visual system elevates the platform’s incredible content, making it easy for users to explore and discover women’s stories, and to apply them in the classroom.

Collaborators
Lindsey Parker
Megan Moore
Jax Jackson
Joe Branton
MK Perry
Nate Witte
Gabe Molochko

Client Team
Leslie Hayes
Allyson Schettino
Kelly I. Aliano

Live Work
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OF TWO MINDS ®