Design Patterns

Color Palette

Alice Blue #F1F7FA
use the default text color Ink (#1E1E1E)

Blue #254977
use White (#FFF) as text color

Alabaster #EDEBE3
use the default text color Ink (#1E1E1E)

Flame #DB8749
use the default text color Ink (#1E1E1E)

Blue Sapphire #195F74
use White (#FFF) as text color

Font

Open Sans (a Google font): https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Open+Sans

Images

Heros & Page Featured Images

Crop will be taken from the middle slice of the image on desktop at 315px tall

2000 x 600px (okay to keep same aspect ratio, but keeping it shorter will give more control over the hero crop)

Blog Post Featured Images

These images appear in the hero area of the blog post, but also come through in various list views, so it is more important that these are cropped with a consistent aspect ratio of 16:9.

Acceptable image dimensions at that aspect ratio are:

  • 1200 x 675 px
  • 1920 x 1080 px
  • 2550 x 1440 px

Some pages, like Events landing page have aspect ratio of 3:2: https://bsc.hks.harvard.edu/events/

Standard Cards

601 x 338px (16:9 aspect ratio)

Side Cards

600 x 400px recommended, although the media and text blocks used for this card are meant to be flexible. It is most important to maintain consistent image sizes when they are in a list

Person Headshots

180 x 220px

Headshots on CoP page

480 x 640px

Event Spotlight

Panelists Matt Andrews, Lant Pritchett, Dan Honig, and Salimah Samji speaking to a room of HKS students

Learning, Failure, and Blame in the Public Sector

September 22, 2022
Harvard Kennedy School

Problems in the public sector are numerous. It is an arena where critique is constant, mistakes are magnified, success is taken for granted, and the risk of failure has public consequences. In this complex landscape, how do you pivot from finger-pointing positions of ‘winner-loser’ and ‘we-they’ to creating a learning environment of “us?” Is failure without blame possible? We explore these questions in this panel discussion on “Learning, Failure, and Blame in the Public Sector” with Lant Pritchett, Salimah Samji, Dan Honig, and Matt Andrews.

Blog Posts (dynamic)

Card Blocks (manual variation 1)

My IPP Journey in Louisiana: The World Got Smaller as the Process Deepened 

October 28, 2022

Guest blog by Delery Rice, IPP 2021 The COVID pandemic offered many challenges and horrible outcomes for so many people

Civil service expenditure in Fiji

September 29, 2022

Guest blog written by Bernadette C Bainimarama, I signed up for this course with the belief that I would learn strategies to

PDIA to accelerate energy transitions and net zero economies in LAC

Guest blog written by Alfonso Blanco Bonilla, I have the honor of leading the Latin American Energy Organization since 2017.

Card Blocks (manual variation 2)

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PDIA Toolkit

PDIA Toolkit

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Notes, computer and media

Audio & Video Guides

Cursus eget nunc scelerisque viverra mauris in aliquam sem fringilla. Enim nec dui nunc mattis enim ut tellus.

Person pointing on a map

BSC Cases

Tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Cursus eget nunc scelerisque.

Books on a shelf

Side Card

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Upcoming Event

Building PFM Capabilities in Africa Closing Workshop

December 11-13, 2023
Lisbon, Portugal

BSC collaborates with other organizations to offer international training programs where groups from multiple countries engage in a combined in-person workshop to learn the basics of PDIA. The groups then return to their countries to apply what they have learned for a period of 6-7 months and finally re-convene to share lessons and achievements.

Executive Education Programs

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Implementing Public Policy

Why is policy implementation failure so common? What can be done about it so that we can achieve successful outcomes more often and make real change happen?

Apply to IPP

See What Others Have Learned

Leading Economic Growth

Leading Economic Growth Online is an executive program that brings together leading experts in economic development with practitioners from around the globe to focus on practical approaches to shared growth and development. 

Apply to LEG

See What Others Have Learned

PDIA Toolkit

A DIY Approach to solving complex problems.

The PDIAtoolkit is designed to guide you through the process of solving complex problems which requires working in teams.

Contrasting current approaches and PDIA – Taken from “What is PDIA” page

Elements of ApproachMainstream Development Projects/Policies/ProgramsProblem Driven Iterative Adaption
What drives action?Externally nominated problems or ‘solutions’ in which deviation from ‘best practices’ forms is itself defined as the problemLocally Problem Driven – looking to solve particular problems
Planning for action?Lots of advance planning, articulating a plan of action, with implementation regarded as following the planned script‘Muddling through’ with the authorization of positive deviance and a purposive crawl of the available design space
Feedback loopsMonitoring (short loops, focused on disbursement and process compliance) and Evalulation (long feedback loop on outputs, maybe outcomes)Tight feedback loops based on the problem and experimentation with information loops integrated with decisions
Plans for scaling up and
diffusion of learning
Top-down – the head learns and leads, the rest listen and followDiffusion of feasible practice across organizations and communities of practitioners
Source: Escaping Capability Traps through Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA)

Project page templates:

Project-Related Blog Posts (An option but prefer below as template to use)

Learning to Develop a Sustainable Tourism Project by Tim McNaught and Anisha Poobalan

Evaluating Potential Sites for New Industrial Zones by Priyanka Samaraweera

Attracting Anchor Investors in Solar Panel Manufacturing by Ganga Palakativa

Project Photos

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Test – H2

Test – H3

Test – Normal Text

Test – Small Text

Upcoming Events

Headshot of Dan Honig

Motivation and Purpose in the Public Sector

October 28, 2024
Harvard Kennedy School

In this book talk, Elizabeth Linos engaged in a conversation with Dan Honig on the topic of motivation and purpose in the public sector. The discussion focused on how governments can break from the status quo and cultivate a workforce of dedicated, empowered public servants.