Case Study
A political movement with Substack subscribers, two podcasts, seven writers, and a coalition of think tanks — but a website that said none of it.
The Challenge
Steve Baker — former Cabinet minister, RAF engineer, software architect at Lehman Brothers — had built something real. A Substack with a growing subscriber base. A podcast pulling in serious guests. Seven writers producing weekly arguments about liberty, governance, and the state of British politics.
But the website didn't reflect any of it. It was a splash page — a logo, four icons, and a footer. No voice, no proposition, no context. If you didn't already know what Fighting for a Free Future was, the site gave you no reason to find out.
The real problem wasn't design — it was audience. The people most likely to discover the movement (politically curious professionals in their twenties and thirties) had no on-ramp. The site spoke to insiders. The growth audience was invisible.
The Approach
Audience
Mapped four audience segments. The existing base — conservative activists, think tank insiders — were already finding their way in. The real opportunity was politically curious young professionals who'd never heard of Steve Baker. They needed to understand what this was in five seconds, not five minutes.
Positioning
The content had the energy of UnHerd or The Spectator — assertive, structured, intellectually serious. But the website looked institutional. The repositioning was clear: build a media brand that happens to have a political mission, not a political organisation that happens to publish.
Creative
Navy and orange. Bebas Neue headlines. Duotone writer portraits in a unified style so seven different people look like they belong to the same publication. Typographic podcast cover art. Editorial illustrations in a screen-print aesthetic. Every visual decision serves the positioning: serious, insurgent, professional.
The site needed to make someone who'd never heard of this movement feel, in five seconds, that these people are serious — and that they're angry about the right things.
The Build