It all began with a friend who was refused a divorce. “One of my first projects was a combination of the two worlds I came from: humanities and art,” said Tal Halamish, co-founder of Fine Line, a design agency that teamed up with tech giants and academia to build websites for NGOs and aid them with branding and marketing techniques.
“We noticed how women who marry in Orthodoxy don’t have a direct way to access pre-marriage agreements which can help prevent instances of agunut, [chained to being married], so we decided to make it readily available, at the click of a button,” she said.
The daughter of a lawyer, who grew up in a religious family, Halamish promoted and managed this project, which was meant to enable Orthodox women – and men – who marry in the rabbinate to download the agreements and sign them online. “I also had a friend whose husband refused to divorce her, so the issue was personal for me, and I saw myself fulfilling her needs there,” Halamish said.
“By simply characterizing and designing a good website and coming up with a business model, we could make an immense impact for Israeli women,” she said, adding that they had also designed ketubot (marriage contracts) and sold them to make the project profitable and thus sustainable, an idea led by her partner, Nataly Dahari.
“This experience taught me that by using digital tools and proper design and characterization, and creating online projects that simply look good, it is possible to make huge social change,” Halamish said. “There are many organizations promoting themselves with press and conferences and politicians, but it turns out you can also just make a good website, do proper promotion, and shape and influence people’s lives in Israel – and that was a game changer for me.”
The power of humanities in hi-tech
The 28-year-old agency co-founder did not grow up in the realms of technology. She studied at the Shalem Academic Center, where she focused on liberal arts, philosophy, and Judaism. “My studies coincided with COVID and the lockdowns and all,” she explained, “and I felt that although the world of humanities was nice, I was missing feasible activity, and felt that I had lost myself.”
Halamish decided to enroll in a course about UX/UI – what you interact with on a website (screens, buttons, icons, etc.) and how you interact. “Art and design were always part of my soul, and I was debating whether I should study design.” In the end, she even taught herself how to code. “I bought a second screen and watched tutorials on YouTube. On one screen I watched and listened, and on the other one I coded. I bought all the available platforms and began building websites,” she explained humbly.
“This was my entry into the technological world. I understood that it was an entirely open world, in contrast to academia, where it’s all closed and structured. Don’t get me wrong,” she added quickly, “it is critically important to open a book, have a structured syllabus and learn about the different periods and ideologies in history. Humanities studies were very relevant to my work. People in the market who hear that I studied philosophy, Judaism, and humanities are surprised.
“But many topics I deal with are related to the world of humanities: learning and developing an idea connects to the worlds of the text; characterizing needs and building strategy are like planning the structures of academic essays. I am very proud and happy that I came from the world of humanities. It’s an important part of my identity and has many occupational advantages.”
DURING THE COVID pandemic, many organizations relying on physical conferences and meetings were in distress. “Many of them just didn’t have digital services or online presence,” Halamish explained. She decided to partner up with Shahar Bechor, a lecturer and presenter of a podcast about design, and the two took a leap of faith.
“We founded Fine Line, a company whose goal is to enable as much social impact as possible through digital tools. I brought the programming and project management, and he brought his phenomenal designing skills and connections. We took both aspects and created something that can help people.”
And indeed, many NGOs turned to the new hybrid social-technological firm and asked for help in building a website, asking what they can do to get it up quickly. Halamish explained that in the early phases of the pandemic, many organizations that relied on physical conferences and meetings were in distress. “Many just didn’t have digital services or online presence,” she added.
The first project they picked up was Resisim, a program by the NATAL association, which deals with psychological distress and post trauma, offering a storytelling platform for soldiers to tell their personal stories of trauma and battle shock. “We helped them with characterization, designed a website for them. After a time of voluntary work, except for a symbolic fee for development, we decided that to make it sustainable we needed to expand and camp up with a business model.”
The two went for an innovative approach: to cooperate with the private tech sector and offer tech companies to collaborate with their social-technological experiment. “Tech companies in Israel are very generous when it comes to donations and contributions,” Halamish revealed.
“We reached out to social departments and CEOs of tech companies, who anyway allocate money to donations, and argued that with our idea and methods, they would know exactly where their money was being spent, and will also have a tangible outcome to view with their own eyes,” referring to websites, branding campaigns, and even apps which they would help build for civil society organizations and associations.
“To our pleasant surprise, many gave us their trust and went along with us,” she said. “They saw a design studio whose capabilities were well established, which understands technology and product management just like them, and which grants them both meaning and transparency.”
THE DUO’S first major partners were Monday.com, which contributed for the building of websites for the Social Space initiative in Tel Aviv, as well as Israel’s national botanical garden “whose older website looked horrendous,” Halamish added with a smile.
Once the firm was established and its name was made known, Halamish and Bechor attempted to approach the academic sector. “We turned to Shenkar, Bezalel, and HIT College, and we offered them that instead of working on fictitious projects, students would join us along with top-tier Israeli designers, who would mentor them and teach them how to integrate professionally, all through a project with social impact,” she said.
“This collaboration was received well, and today students receive academic credits for enrolling in these courses, with waiting lists of more than 300 students on the national level. Here, too, this is not merely volunteering but rather enrolling in an interesting project with a leading tech company, which promotes social impact and helps students integrate in the market.”
Halamish said that the integration of design, hi-tech, social issues, and even academia “was one of the most interesting things that has happened to me. We have been contacted by some of the leading companies in Israel. We opened a completely business-oriented studio, and it all happened through social activity. We are now after three financing rounds, high-ranking officials can see our websites, and they’re usually impressed and jump on board.”
From Arab municipalities to reservists
When an organization first approaches Fine Line, the firm conducts an in-depth strategic process that takes several months. First, they characterize the group’s needs, conduct market research, choose a tone and style, identify target audiences, perform data analysis, and also come up with naming.
Then there’s the user experience design, which includes language development, branding and rebranding, and refining of the existing language in accordance with the strategic research conducted. And finally, there’s the content creating stage, which involves building the platform’s applications: a website, a product, merch, or apps.
Examples of their work vary. “We had an interesting collaboration with WIX,” said Halamish. “We were contacted by a man named Arthur who opened a store right before the war, but then he was called to reserve duty, and I believe he is still there. His dream business collapsed, and WIX wanted to help him by building a website for the store and allowing for online shopping. They contacted us and we designed it and built the website, which enabled him to cope with the situation while on duty.”
Another example for a project is a collaboration with Fiverr for an organization called Ramat HaShnayim (Level 2). They built a reception center for children from kibbutzim Nir Am and Be’eri who had been targeted by the Hamas massacre. The center runs workshops for them and houses them there, treating trauma through baking, dancing, and more. “The center was a bit perplexed in terms of branding, and Fiverr supported them; the main need they identified was in the area of branding, as well as a website that brings together all their activities – and that’s where we also came in,” the social-technological entrepreneur said.
“Also, as part of the unfortunate circumstances of the war, we helped with the promotion of a project to collect funds for Sagi Golan, a fallen soldier and member of the LGBTQ community,” she said. “We designed a website to collect donations for the Pride Parade in his memory.”
HALAMISH POINTED out that they also work with the Arab sector, though mainly in the municipal area. “Honestly, we found it challenging to get initiatives of private individuals in the Arab sector to join us. But we did work with larger institutional or organizational actors. For example, we worked on the Jerusalem Municipality’s Al-Bashair program, which enables students from east Jerusalem to integrate into employment and academic opportunities, as well as the Einar project, a youth program aimed for the youth of east Jerusalem.”
Another one of their benefactors in the Arab sector was a unique Jerusalem cleaning cooperative, previously covered in depth by The Jerusalem Post (“The Tand’if Cleaning Cooperative – Promoting social change, one worker at a time,” In Jerusalem magazine, May 31).
Today, the duo also has projects in collaboration with the government. “Following the war, we opened a group of volunteer designers who wanted to help with advocacy. These projects circulated on social media and even to Times Square,” Halamish said.
“Likewise, the Labor Ministry sought to start digital courses for those who could not study physically, such as evacuees. We took on the mission to create the first digital course for school students, first for evacuees and then for professional schools across Israel. We wanted children to learn Wordpress, which would grant them a profession and would also enable them to build websites.”
‘Don’t be ashamed to want to make profits’
Halamish doesn’t like to talk about herself. “I answer the question of how I’m doing as a direct derivative of how the company is doing, and I’m not so sure how healthy that is,” she said, laughing.
“I’m really nothing out of the ordinary,” she said. “The main story about me is that I had never been employed by a firm for a long time. I always knew that I wanted to found something myself: that this was the best way for my fulfillment. When you’re independent and a freelancer, you know that whatever you do is 100% yours. When you fail it’s very, very hard, but still I wanted that experience of knowing that I had built something with my own ten fingers. Being independent is also a headache, so this is a warning that people should choose this path only if they really, really desire it.
“One of the main things I’ve discovered in my four-year journey was that people should be open to letting the place of social impact surprise them in the business world as well. The two go hand in hand together perfectly. Earning through a business model and doing good for society are not at all mutually exclusive; if anything, it’s the other way around,” Halamish emphasized.
“You shouldn’t be afraid to act for social issues while combining them with your business model, as this allows the work on social issues to become sustainable. We volunteered during the war not for the sake of business but for the sake of Israel. We did things for free, and it also brought excellent business opportunities – and this is nothing to be ashamed of,” she said.
“It was an investment that paid for itself – and allowed us to do even more good. And for me, this is an exciting story.”