STANDING forCHILDREN

GRAPHICS

Simon Berry is trying to get Coca-Cola to use its distribution channels to help save lives in developing countries.

SEPTEMBER, 2010

DESIGNISsoSIM

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-Paul Rand

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CONTENT

1Coca Cola saving children’s lives.

2SIMON BERRY

How to teach Graphic Design to kids

FOLLOW THE STEPS

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4Interview with a Graphic Designer

Veerle Pieters

Portfolios that speaks for them-selves

GETTING IDEAS

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Simon Berry ColaLife is a simple campaign – asking Coca-Cola to use its incredible distribution capacity to get medi-cines, such as oral rehydration salts and high-dose Vitamin A tablets, to dying children in developing countries. We are currently in a prototyping phase where we are developing the ColaLife ‘aidpod’, a medical carrier case that can slot securely in between the Coca-Cola bottles transported in crates around the world. The aidpod container fits in be-

tween the necks of the bot-tles in a Coca-Cola crate, and is designed to carry ‘social products’ such as oral rehydration salts, vi-tamin A tablets and water purification tablets.

Simon Berry is the founder of ColaLife, a campaign that is trying to get Coca-Cola to use its distribution channels to help save lives in develop-ing countries. For over 10 months, Berry has been using the convening power of the Internet to rally people all over the world to lend their sup-port and skills to a campaign that could change the way multinational businesses engage with developing countries.

Talking to

about saving children’s lives

STORY

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What is ColaLife?Before ColaLife, Berry had spent 12 years living and work-ing in developing countries on the British aid program. He later worked as Chief Executive of rural regeneration char-ity ruralnet|uk, which he founded in 2002 to help rural communities improve and strengthen their local economies. More recently, Berry worked at Defra (the UK Goverment’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) on the implementation of Defra’s Third Sector Strategy and Greener Living Fund.Following his recent activity blogging at the G20 Summit in London (he was one of 50 international bloggers invited to the event), Berry spoke to Kate Andrews about ColaLife and his progress harnessing the distribution channel of the world’s best known brand.

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In 1988, while working as a de-velopment worker in remote north east Zambia, conscious that while I could buy a bottle of Coke any-where, 1 in every 5 children un-der the age of five die in these areas, from simple causes such as dehydration through diarrhea. To tap into Coca-Cola’s distribution channels was an idea I had over 20 years ago, but it never went anywhere until I began using new social media technologies, such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr for example.

What has been happening over the past six months?

Since the launch of the campaign and due to the immediate power of our Facebook group, I was in-vited by Salvatore Gabola, Coca-Cola’s Global Head of Stakeholder Relations, to a meeting to discuss the idea further at Coca-Cola’s European HQ in Brussels. Other than building an early relationship with Coca-Cola, during this meet-ing Gabola made a commitment to include the ColaLife idea into the research already planned, as part of the corporation’s commit-ment to the Business Call to Ac-tion, in East Africa. Furthermore, an agreement was also made to report back on the research as it progressed, all of which could be

reported on the ColaLife blog.

Last year, ColaLife was nominated for the NewStatesman’s New Me-dia Award, and showcased at Lon-don’s digital media festival, 2geth-er08. It was also featured on BBC Radio 4’s iPM program, and on the BBC World Service.

The Facebook group, which has now reached over 8,600 mem-bers, has been a key to the success of the campaign. From it not only have I gained many new interna-tional connections and ‘front-line’ insights, but voluntary support has led to viral animations, PR, the build of the campaign website and supporting photography.In October last year the ColaL-ife idea was entered in Google’s Project 10 to the 100th, and in November, I returned to Africa to introduce ColaLife to the local workers and families this is been

How did the project start?

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set up for. The ColaLife blog con-tinues to inform the global audi-ence of the story and its progress, and even includes a conversation with people in Tanzania.In April 2009, I was nominated by members of the ColaLife Facebook group and selected to join 50 bloggers from around the World to blog at the G20 Summit where I was able to talk to Bob Geldof about the campaign. Our conver-sation was captured on video by Lloyd Davis, a fellow G20 blogger.

How is the campaigning progressing?

Over the last three months ColaL-ife has been building a relation-ship between Coca-Cola and an international NGO in the hope it would lead to trials of the ColaLife idea in Tanzania. On April 21, at a Business Fights Poverty event

in London, Coca-Cola announced their confirmation to run these tri-als later this year.

What have you learned so far from doing the ColaL-ife campaign?

Hold on to a clear, simple vision, but don’t try to control everything – facilitate. Value every conversa-tion, remember names, make links. The trick is to be dogged without being dogmatic – you won’t have all the answers. Listen! The knowl-edge is in the network, so find some and get plugged in. Always carry publicity – I’ve used Moo cards – they look special and I’ve even ebauctioned a ‘first edition’ set on to raise funds. Go with the stones that roll to get some early wins. Then, don’t keep success to

yourself: thank-yous are free and will come back to you tenfold.

Be flexible and open to offers. Oth-ers may help, but have other pri-orities. So be patient, persuasive and pragmatic – once you engage with bigger players it’s like riding a wave – there’s no point harangu-ing, use the momentum and be prepared for the next one. Use a ‘multi-channel’ approach – with potential supporters everywhere, you need to be everywhere too. My big break came once I had 5000 Facebook users with me. Getting online isn’t everything – I use face-to-face meetings and traditional media too – but it can build support amazingly quickly, and you don’t have to be an Inter-net wiz to do it.

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HOW TOTEACHGRAPHICdesign

kidsTOHOW TO

Careers in graphics design are abundant and present career op-portunities now and for the future. Children who show an early interest in art might be encouraged to put their interest in the arts to use in a career field that will be both financially and cre-atively rewarding. Learn how you can encourage your kids to pur-sue their artistic interests and a career in graphics design.

Have your child begin trac-ing exercises. Using tracing paper have her trace im-ages from any of a variety of print material (for example, magazines, newspapers, bro-chures), then ask her to add something new to the image to make it her own.

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Create challenging design exer-cises. Ask your child to create a logo for his favorite cereal. Have him make up his own car-toon character, first outlining and drawing it and then filling it in with color.

3Purchase art supplies for your child--a quality set of lead and color pencils, sketch pads and erasers. Buy a drawing desk for your child and find a special area where she can work. These tools

will encourage and help improve your child’s in-terest in art.

4Buy age-appropriate graphics software for your child to acclimate him to de-signing on the computer. Have him draw his name as opposed to writing it. Teach him how to draw each letter separately and how to create shadow effects. Ask him to integrate a picture with his name that he feels best describes himself.

BY CARL HOSE

5Download the free version or the extended pay version of ArtRage and have your child take advan-tage of the realistic paint and drawing tools to create designs. This program will teach her how to use a variety of art design tools and help her get a feel for more advanced graphic design techniques such as layering. ArtRage is simple to use and appropriate for younger children.

6Explore graphic design tutorials on the Internet with your child and walk him through the process (see Resources). This is the best way to increase his knowledge

and expand his graphic design skills.8

Portfoliosthat speak for themselves

As the economy spirals out of control, more and more designers are emerging in the

industry.

We will find that there will be more freelance designers, reasons why; easy to start-up, can work from home (looks tempting for people that get laid off, or their hours cut back), can make extra money on

the side, and its a fulfilling career choice.After posting the Industry leading web studios last week… I turned the other direction to look through designer portfolios. These portfolios are not just good they are great… a good portfolio isn’t just a few good projects, it’s a relation between the portfolio itself, and its content or projects.. and in most cases

quality before quantity.So if you are looking to redesign your portfolio or give it the extra something it needs…. I encourage

you to look through these great portfolio pieces.

IDEAS

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GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Veerle is a graphic/web designer based in Belgium. She is a renowned designer and speaker and is considered one of the fifty most influential female bloggers. She founded Duoh! and is the author of one of the webs most beautiful (and popular) blogs, where she gives an insight into her experience within the design industry as well as a range of design and web development tips.

VEERLE PIETERS

VEERLE

I’m living in Belgium. I went to school in Mariakerke, Gent.I began my career in 1992 as a freelance graphic designer un-

der the name of “Duoh!”.As a child I always loved drawing and considered it a hobby. I always thought it

wouldn’t be possible to make this my day job so that’s why I studied tourism until I discov-ered that you could actually study graphic design. That may sound crazy now, but if you put it in its context and time frame (1987) it wasn’t very well known that you could actually study that. I always thought about it from an artistic point of view and believed there wasn’t a future in it. Studying graphic design changed that, and from that point on my hobby be-came my passion and income.

You have an amazing, illustrative, colorful approach to design. Where do you get inspiration for such unique work?

Everywhere really. Just by looking around. I think people differ in the way they look at something. The first thing I see is the color and then I’ll see the shape. Even if I judge art-

A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

ABOUT A GRAPHIC DESIGNER

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work, I’ll see its colors first and then the composition.

How do you keep up with the lat-est web technologies and stan-dards? Do you sometimes prefer designing for print because you don’t have to consider how you will code it or do you look forward to that challenge?

I like the challenge of coding and yes I always look forward to it. There are times that I pre-fer designing for print because of certain limitations in web, but

with print I always feel a bit more scared. Scared to make mistakes. Could be technical or a sim-ple typo. A mistake in print can have big consequences because it’s final and you can’t undo. With web design you can undo your mistake. In print you have so many factors you need to think about. If you could redesign any-thing… a favorite movie poster, an album cover, a product, etc… what would it be and why?

I honestly haven’t thought about this before really, but if I have to mention one thing, then I guess it would be the album covers of

my favorite music label, Naked Music. Some of them use a nice illustra-tive style, a style I can find myself in. Their mu-sic gives me inspiration.

Please speak about the importance of personal projects vs. client work for you.

For personal projects you are your own client and in my experience this can sometimes be tougher to deal with. You have complete Carte Blanche which makes it a bit of a challenge and most designers, includ-ing me, aren’t easily pleased if you design something for yourself. I think this is probably the case for most design-ers, or the fact that you feel the urge to constantly tweak

a design. With client work, you have a focus and a direction that

you can clearly follow . (if you are briefed properly of course), which makes it in my opinion easier. Also, every client is differ-ent. On one hand you have clients that value your opinion, appreci-ate your work, listen to your ad-vice and see you as an expert that are easier to work with.

What advice would you give to someone just starting out as a de-signer?

I think the most important thing is to stay passionate about what you do and don’t lose that drive to constantly learn new things. Also, believe in yourself and stay true to yourself.

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live on the side of life.