Design Challenge and Design Ideas

“Rethink Ireland was set up in 2015 to support the most innovative non-profit organisations working in communities across the country. They provide cash grants and business support to social innovations that can make a real difference. Their task is to fuel these innovations with the knowledge and advice they’ll need to succeed on a national scale.

Their five-year impact report became a publication to communicate their manifesto for the future while also demonstrating their success and the real impact they have had on the country. The report needed to clearly document impact in both a quantitative and qualitative way.

The audience included a mix of corporate investors, government bodies and innovators themselves. The design needed to document concrete results but also showcase the innovators behind those results and provoke a response and future action from the reader.”

How the brief was fulfilled

“The brief was to create a vibrant impact report which stood out amongst a sea of corporate reports and captured the passion and success of the innovators they support The design uses a mix of an elegant serif type, bold illustrated portraits and hand-rendered lettering to capture the balance between expertise and passion. The cover poses a question answered by the results inside.

The front section of the report is shorter than the back section, which contains the awardee stories – allowing readers to navigate straight to the stories behind the impact or examine the detail and strategy first. This was helpful to Rethink when approaching donors or future innovators as they could use the most relevant section of the report to connect to their audience.

A key focus of the report was documenting the impact of Rethink’s support on past awardees – the stories which helped bring the awardees to life. Illustration rather than traditional portrait photography was chosen to accompany the awardee case studies, in part due to Covid-19 limitations but also to reflect Rethink Ireland’s innovative ethos and ability to approach things differently.

We worked closely with Irish illustrator Olivia Golden to create a suite of striking portraits of each awardee. Rendered in loose pen and ink with added texture and vibrant colour, the illustrations sat alongside a Q & A with each awardee and helped create a human connection to each story.

Throughout the report, there are hand-rendered, illustrated elements that punctuate and highlight statistics or keywords, reflecting the human hand behind every piece of information.

The colour palette is vibrant and bold, reflecting the impact and energy behind this ‘manifesto’.”