Brand relaunch: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung

On March 2, 2025, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES ) will celebrate its 100th anniversary. As Germany's oldest political foundation, it stands in the tradition of the labor movement and is deeply committed to the values of social democracy.

To mark this special anniversary, the FES decided on a new, contemporary and globally oriented image in order to present itself in a completely new light. The renowned communications agency adlerschmidt was commissioned to do this.

Since 2021, the FGTCLB agency network and web-vision as lead TYPO3 agency have been responsible for the further development of the FES.de website. In the course of this, FGTCLB was also intensively involved in the comprehensive brand relaunch process, including the support and implementation of the FES.de website and 120 international websites.

The first phase of the web relaunch began in late 2023 and early 2024. In this early phase, comprehensive usability tests were carried out under the direction of Jens Jacobsen, accompanied by FGTCLB and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

This provided valuable insights into the surfing behavior of users. Test groups were given specific tasks, the results of which were supplemented by user interviews and web analyses.

These findings formed the basis for the planned website relaunch. The aim was to provide users with better orientation in the future by clearly communicating what the FES stands for and what it offers.

The FGTCLB had already been working as a service provider for the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung since 2021. However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the collaboration was mainly limited to remote sessions.

In order to achieve the best possible result, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung - under the leadership of Tobias Metz from the DigiKomm team - was aware that the brand and website relaunch was the ideal opportunity to bring all the experts together in one place. The decision was therefore made to hold an on-location sprint, which took place at the end of February 2024 in Marburg at the FGTCLB agency eCentral.

In just under a week, they worked together on navigation concepts, wireframes, migration paths, concepts for the search, requirements and inspiring elements and much more. By the end of the sprint, the team of FES and FGTCLB employees had grown into a well-coordinated scrum team. In the weeks and months that followed, they worked intensively together on the relaunch of FES.de and the foundation's 120 or so international websites.

The results of this sprint served as the basis for the creation of wireframes, which were used for internal coordination at FES. These were further refined in close feedback with Jens Jacobsen and then - after several rounds of refinement with various stakeholder groups - handed over to the design agency adlerschmidt.

Between May 2025 and the end of August 2024, regular coordination meetings were held between FES, adlerschmidt and FGTCLB to review the progress of the brand and web relaunch.

The FGTCLB took on an advisory role, particularly in the following areas

• Feasibility of the design proposals with TYPO3: ensuring that the designs are technically feasible.
• Accessibility: Implementation of the requirements for an accessible web design.
• Findings from usability tests: Integration of results on system architecture, navigation, information architecture and user experience.

As part of the development, the search with a Solr search server was prepared and the existing interfaces to the FES's own Oracle database were revised, as an improved search experience for the users of the FES website was also to be achieved in particular.

In addition, important preparatory work was carried out for the automatic migration of around 250,000 content elements and pages in order to enable the design switch of the relaunch almost "at the push of a button" - without any major additional editorial effort.

The actual TYPO3 development, front-end development, integration of the new designs and adaptation of the information architecture were completed in just four months from mid-July 2024. The team, consisting of an average of seven people, worked in four sprints of two weeks each using the Scrum methodology.

The close collaboration between members of FES and FGTCLB in the agile development process enabled targeted and efficient implementation. On November 13, 2024, the new website was launched successfully, smoothly and as desired "at the push of a button".

During the relaunch, the majority of the 250,000 page contents and pages were automatically transferred to the new design. The new navigation structure was activated and completely new content was published for the "100 years of FES" anniversary page. At the same time, the new search function based on the Solr search server was introduced and new content elements were made available to around 600 editors.

Only seven content pages had to be manually adapted and published by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung's editorial team. All other pages were migrated automatically. After the go-live, the content is currently being editorially optimized: Individual elements are undergoing a review and adaptation process in order to improve them further.

Parallel to the relaunch of FES.de, around 120 international websites of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung were also successfully converted to the new brand design.