Project Dream School
Project Scope: Graphic Design, Marketing Communications
Project Dream School is a campaign conducted by The Better India in partnership with Dream School Foundation, an organization working to make quality education, overall development and a happy childhood a daily reality for children.
The campaign aims at raising funds for aiding the education costs of underprivileged students susceptible to dropping out of school at the higher primary stage. The mission was to use design as a tool for empathy in order to create compelling, powerful social media graphics to move people and make them donate for the cause.
Outcome
Powerful social media creatives connecting to the occasions of Diwali and Children’s Day were designed for the campaign and published on all social media handles of The Better India to propagate the message to the audience, thereby driving them to donate for the cause.
Services & Credit
Designer: Sai Sudharshan Raja
Content and Strategy: Sanchari Pal, Barkha Goenka
Results and Impact
The desired target of Rs. 5 lakhs to be raised for the cause was achieved within a month, with the money being handed over to the families of the children to enable their little tots to continue dreaming.
The Diwali Campaign
Research & Planning
It was decided to connect the campaign with noteworthy Indian occasions in order to strongly drive the message home. The occasions of Diwali and Children’s Day were chosen for the same, considering their closeness in dates from the time the project kickstarted.
The idea of Diwali being the “festival of lights” resonated with the thought of gifting the “light” of education to children. Children’s Day was chosen for obvious reasons, and there’s nothing like celebrating the same in the best manner by contributing towards an upliftment cause aimed at children.
The brainstorming sessions to formulate the creative connecting to Diwali incorporated the creation of a mood board mainly depicting the imagery of ‘Diwali’ and ‘education’. Displaying crackers in any form was to be avoided to abide by the organization’s sustainability practices and hence, the most effective representation of the festival was through lamps/diyas.
Parallels were also drawn to justify how apt this style was for illustrating the building at that juncture of time, since the occasion was virtually celebrated during the COVID-19 pandemic, when everything became reliant on technology.
Process
Rummaging through images of various educational motifs ended up in drawing a conclusion between the similar profiles of a protractor and diya. This was the hook required to design the creative, by depicting the protractor as a diya with its wick burning.
Further context emphasizing the message of this campaign being a children-oriented cause was established by placing the star of the design on a white, grid paper background.
Final Visuals
The Children's Day Campaign
Research & Planning
The Children’s Day campaign was visualized as a series of creatives building up to Children’s Day, owing to the intimate connection between this occasion and the cause.
Every child to be supported by their campaign had narrated their dream, all of which were documented as quotes to be used as content on the creatives.
The quotes portrayed the dream profession of every child and served as the basis of the design concept. It was decided to capture the transition from every child’s current condition to the profession they would pursue in the future owing to the effect of the donation by the sponsors.
Process
The idea of showing transition was simple. A graphic comprising two halves of the same individual, with the left and right halves showing their current, poor selves and their future, successful selves respectively effectively communicated the message of rising up to riches from rags. This transition was captured by picking an element relevant to the profession the children wanted to pursue.
For a vivid instance, if the child dreamt of becoming a doctor, the doctor’s coat was chosen as the element to depict, where the stark contrasting element displaying the current scenario was best depicted by a tattered dress. The method of amalgamating these elements together to form the singular graphic showing the transition was followed throughout the series.
The quotes which served as the basis for the graphics were also added to the images to establish context and enhance the depth of the message majorly conveyed by the design.
Final Visuals
