EDUCATION FOR ALL This campaign for imaginary client UNESCO consists of a content/concept map for internal use by the agency, and a poster, brochure, and animated GIF intended to drive people to the UNESCO Web site for more information about the EFA initiative. For a look at the individual pieces, please scroll down.
Animated GIF In this Web ad, a sheet of notebook paper undergoes a surprising transformation. I like the idea of helping people see familiar things anew, and of imbuing everyday objects with magic (though of course they possess their own special magic already). I think, too, that using such familiar objects in a piece can help forge a very personal connection with the viewer.
Poster The body copy reads: “Education kills poverty, slays HIV/AIDS, cuts down infant mortality, and battles human-rights abuses. It even has the potential to wipe out war. Yet we devote far more to soldiers than students. Four days of global military spending could fund UNESCO’s Education for All initiative for an entire year. unesco.org/education. Fight the good fight.”
Brochure The brochure picks up on the poster’s visual theme but adds one-word captions beneath the weapons, creating a sense of strangeness that pulls viewers into the piece. From there, a roll fold leads to a flood of color that underscores the message. Click the slide-show controls to see the piece “unfold.”
Content Map This was a challenging exercise in research and distillation, and an early effort to grapple with a grid. It also let me geek out on diagrams (I'm a big fan of dictionary illustrations). At one point, after hours of obsessive up-close work, I used Illustrator’s zoom tool to escape back up out of what I had affectionately begun to call “Little Arrow Land” and dash to a taqueria. As I sat in a daze, eating a burrito and gazing out the window, I noticed a traffic sign directing motorists toward a freeway. It was a simple affair, with vertical lines delineating the street lanes, and several different black arrows, some single-headed, some branching like minimalist trees. It hovered before me like a vision—the clean black shapes, the mystical white spaces between them. I had never seen anything so beautiful. I contemplated returning with a ladder under cover of darkness and making off with the surprisingly unacknowledged masterpiece (looked at, and overlooked, every single day)—but then no one would have found the freeway ever again.
The map breaks down the extremely complex topic of Education for All by way of fourteen diagrams and three main sections: “What is EFA?,” “What are the problems?,” “What are the solutions?” (Note that the diagrams grow out of, and combine with, one another.) I was responsible for all the content. Scroll down to see close-ups and read the copy. Actual dimensions of the whole map: 18x24 inches.
