When Canada reads, Canada grows.

The National Reading Campaign Website Redesign – Promoting advocacy, engagement and research to help build a nation of readers.

National Reading Campaign

The National Reading Campaign (NRC) is a national multi-sector coalition of organizations and individuals, passionate reading advocates and enthusiasts, dedicated to the principle that reading is essential to the well-being and happiness of every Canadian and to the health of our democracy. 


The NRC came to Wise & Hammer, not just looking for a new website. They needed a sophisticated online presence that was robust, powerful, AODA accessible, interactive and flexible. A platform that can house and promote research about the joy of reading, a place where conversations about books and reading can occur, a set of tools that will help to help engage readers and, act as a rallying point for advocacy.

Not just book smarts.

“We want an open the door for all Canadians.”

With the new website, we’d been tasked with creating one that would meet or exceed all Canadian and Ontario accessibility mandates and laws. As Wise & Hammer believes the web is a right for all people we’d already been developing and delivering accessible websites for almost a decade.

Accessibility never has to mean boring, it’s just a new design challenge. So we created a huge, bold colourful accessible canvas allowing the NRC’s images, videos and content to shine.

Mobile, Accessible, Gorgeous.

On any device, at any place, at any time is a good time to read.

A rich desktop experience used to mean either cutting lots of corners for your website’s mobile delivery, or seeking out third party apps to maintain and possibly even add a secondary set of content just to have it appear on a phone.

The National Reading Campaign website is built for desktops and mobile devices. We cut no corners, building a gorgeous, accessible, clean and expandable platform that just works, on any device.

How often would you describe creating a new website as a pleasant experience? For us at the National Reading Campaign working with Wise & Hammer on this huge new site has been just that. Throughout the process they left no detail to chance, no aspect was too minor to be discussed, every problem led to a creative solution that reflected their up to the moment knowledge of web usage, and deadlines were always met or surpassed. They had clear and well-thought out ideas to avoid issues that we'd faced on our old website, all of which we implemented. We were able to sit back and watch their team fashion us a magnificent website. We'd do it again with them in a minute.

James Roy — The National Reading Campaign

Readerly Blog.

Engagement isn't just adding a social share to your website, the NRC wanted the ability to truly to speak to the community of parents, students, teachers and librarians. The Readerly blog does just that, driving these conversations expanding the reach of the campaign, and offering people the chance to communicate.

Microsite enabled.

The difference between a good campaign website and a great one, is the ability to keep that campaign always moving forward, and the NRC wanted to do just that. Wise & Hammer created a smart new way for them to make their own micro-campaign websites. 

Governor General’s Literary Awards.

As Canada’s national literary awards, the GGs represent the rich diversity of Canadian literature. The National Reading Campaign wanted to share information about the winners, nominees and drive discussion with their community about the books.