Civic Spirit Event Program

We designed this event program for the Community Foundation for the National Capitol Region for a "celebration of civic spirit honoring The Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation and presenting the 2009 Linowes Leadership Awards Recipients."

Program Calendar - Winter 2010

We prepared this magazine-style program calendar to highlight the programs and services offered by the Women's Center (Winter 2010). The interior is black and white.

The CliMatrix: COP15 ad in the Financial Times

Avaaz, continuing in what has become a great tradition of parody ads, took out space in the "Green New Deal" supplement in the Financial Times today. A quarter page ad on the front page depicts Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and Yukio Hatoyama in shiny black outfits and dark sunglasses, posing the question "What is the CliMatrix?" and inviting readers to turn to the back page to find out.

Trick... or Treaty?

Avaaz took out an advertisement timed to coincide with a summit of EU leaders to try to push for support of a climate finance package and set the stage for Copenhagen in December. The proximity of the summit to Halloween lent itself to a concept that was a lot of fun to work on. As usual, the timing was short, but it turned out well and is printed full page, in full color, in today's international edition of the Financial Times.

Green Energy Economy (Financial Times ad)

TckTckTck had a chance to put a full page, full-color ad on the back page of the Financial Times the day before UN climate talks began in New York and leading up to the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh. We were able to work with them under tight time constraints to develop a visual for their message. See below for the text of the ad, encouraging the leaders that will be attending the talks to take advantage of the opportunity to lead the way towards a fair, ambitious and binding deal in Copenhagen.

We are all Neda

We recently helped Avaaz with the design of a t-shirt concept they had conceived as a fundraiser, with proceeds going "to support projects that enable Iranians to freely access the internet." Here's how they describe the concept:

CWS 'Enough for All' Brochure #2: Women and Climate Change

Church World Service and CEDC continue the "Enough for All" series of brochures with this publication. The publication details the disproportionately heavy toll changes in the environment are taking on women and girls and urges the government to pay attention. The CWS campaign utilizes the challenges and opportunities brought by climate change to promote just and ecologically sustainable development.

The full brochure is available by clicking here.

Countdown to Copenhagen

One of our larger partners, Church World Service comes to us with specific parameters in mind for projects. This project already had a logo and color scheme and we worked with CWS to choose what image and story would have the greatest impact.  The mailer is intended to get people to take action on climate change before the climate change meetings in Copenhagen. This project was printed on 100% recycled paper, using veggie inks and windpower.

Friendship Parent's News

Friendship decided to start a newsletter to increase communication with its parents. We used the design style we estabished for Friendship in its other materials and used many photos to catch busy people's eyes.
4 color process.

Climate Wars

This project blossomed into a four page spread after initially being conceived as a single page. Continuing on a successful theme of parodying pop culture to drive home a point, Avaaz.org embedded the drama of the UN global climate talks (in Poznan) and the upcoming EU summit (in Brussels) into a blockbuster storyline emphasizing the epic battle that faces Angela Merkel as she makes some very important decisions regarding the environment and the economy. We created the digital illustrations and other visuals to accompany it -- and we even managed to get a few Ewoks in on the last page.

'What are we waiting for?' and 'WANTED' - Congo advertisements

We helped design an Avaaz campaign advertisement targeting Gordon Brown and David Miliband of the UK, encouraging them to "support a neutral EU force to protect Congo's civilians." Shortly after, Avaaz sent out an email describing how "[the UK] Africa minister called us immediately, and their position has shifted -- the UK has moved toward supporting a European force!"

Bridges special edition

With the success of the redesigned Bridges magazine, Bon Secour Spiritual Center wanted a special edition of the magazine to promote their fundraising campaign. The special edition includes: giving opportunities, information of how the funding will be used and drawings of the planned renovations for the center.

Bridges Magazine

In 2007, Bon Secours Spiritual Center came to CEDC in hopes of creating a more effective promotional tool out of their newsletter, Bridges, which at the time was designed in-house. CEDC redesigned the current look and created a smaller sized 6x9, 4-color magazine format for the new bi-yearly publication. The magazine includes informative articles, announcements and services offered by the center, as well as a detailed 8-month program calendar.

The Collaborative for Education Organizing: Building Excellence in Public Education

The Community Foundation wanted to present groundbreaking work done by the Collaborative for Education Organizing (CEO) to the community. This white paper details the activities of CEO and the five organizations who received grants from CEO. It was important to CFNCR that the report be clean, eye catching and engaging for the reader. Using white space, pull-quotes, large bold areas of color, with famous historical quotes on education and images taken by students from the participating organizations helped accomplish this goal.

Peace vs. Justice? and They Agree on One Thing

Avaaz developed two ad campaigns to run in African countries neighboring Sudan offering a strong defence of the International Criminal Court and the trial of Omar al-Bashir after he was indicted for genocide.

Olympic Handshake Wrap-up ad

The Avaaz Olympics campaign was wrapped up with an advertisement online and in Ming Pao in Hong Kong. The headline asks "As the Olympics draw to a close, what do 200,000 human rights and democracy loving global citizens want to bring to China?" The answer: A Handshake.

Love China Love [Tibet, Darfur, Burma]

Avaaz developed a broad campaign relating to the Olympics in Beijing and unfurled it in advance of the opening ceremonies, continuing all the way through to the closing ceremonies. A large piece of the overall campaign that we helped with was the "Love China Love X" theme, which was pushed online, in newspapers, and in unique formats like pedicabs, scooters, and pediwalkers. The three prongs of the campaign were: [1] Love China Love Tibet [2] Love China Love Darfur and [3] Love China Love Burma.

Vote the Common Good

Catholics in Alliance came to us with a theme and a typographic logo that they wanted to incorporate into the design for this non-partisan voter's guide to help educate voters for the 2008 presidential election. The theme was "Faith can move mountains: vote the common good," so we suggested a concept to visually link the two: a small, non-descript church in the middle of flat land, with a mountain looming in the distance where it had no business being. (The mountain is actually Denali/Mt. McKinley, the tallest peak on this continent.)
 

Street Fighter II-themed G8 ad

The third ad in the G8 series by Avaaz.org parodied Street Fighter II, the video game popular in the early nineties which "featured a roster of eight playable characters that could be selected by the player. Ryu and Ken, the main characters from the original Street Fighter returned along with six new characters from different nationalities." [Wikipedia]

[Download a printable PDF of this ad]

Hello Kiddies G8 ad

Second in a series of three, this ad ran in conjunction with the G8 meetings in Japan. The subject matter was a pop culture reference to something from Japan, a parody of "Hello Kitty" to call out the leaders who are blocking progress on the climate change issue.

Tanabata G8 Ad

This ad was the first in a series of three which we worked on with Avaaz.org in conjunction with the G8 meetings in Japan in July of 2008. The opening of the meetings coincided with the beginning of the Tanabata festival, "when people in Japan write their wishes for the year ahead and tie them to bamboo trees." A number of other groups also partnered on this ad (Oxfam, Save the Children, ONE, and GCAP), and they had been collecting virtual "wishes" from their constituents.

CWS 'Enough for All' Brochure on Climate Change

Church World Service came to CEDC for help on a brochure for its "Enough for All" campaign. The campaign utilizes the challenges and opportunities brought by climate change to promote just and ecologically sustainable development. Key concerns were to use 100% recycled paper and vegetable inks and to use striking, optimistic photography to make an impression that we have hope if we start now.

Celebration and Banquet Package: Helping spirits soar

Mentors Inc. has come to CEDC for several years to design materials for their Annual Graduation which honors mentors and graduating seniors. For the May 2008 graduation Mentor's Inc. wanted a different format from the past so we came up with a larger size for the program to better fit all the sponsors and advertisements and a different folding style for the invitation. The project was printed on 100# gloss cover and included a save-the-date postcard, an invitation, envelopes, a reply card, an auction card, and a program book.

Donor Handbook: Your Philanthropy Portfolio

CFNCR wanted to create an easy handbook for new donors – to orient them to the services offered by the organization, as well as the benefits available to the donor. The design, in keeping with the new corporate identity, uses a bright palette of colors, bold photographs, and white space. The design enhances the content, making it easy for users to find the answers they are looking for.

Bali (Titanic parody ad)

This ad was developed in typical Avaaz fashion -- in response to current conditions on the ground, with very little lead-time. It was an attempt to pressure Japan, the USA, and Canada, who were holding up the Bali climate talks by refusing to consider emissions targets.

The concepts evolved slightly in the little time we had available to work on it. The resulting parody of the widely recognizable Titanic poster garnered much press attention and reports indicate that it was instrumental in helping nudge Japan towards accepting emissions targets.

COC Annual Report 2006-2007

Center of Concern wanted to bring their new more youthful, organizational look to their annual report, a publication that CEDC has worked on for many years. With the new look in mind, CEDC changed up their normal layout, creating a horizontal based design, and used the “brushstroke” rough edge from their logo as a repeatable graphic element to help frame the page and bring in a bit of the movement felt in the logo.

Center Focus

Center of Concern wanted to bring their new more youthful, organizational look to their newsletter Center Focus which in the past had been designed in-house. In keeping with the new look, CEDC designed a clean, bright, bold masthead that incorporated the rough “brushstroke” used on their logo. A clean 4-column grid layout was designed; and typography and color were kept consistent with the COC logo.

Academic Design Guide

Friendship Public Charter School requested an Academic Guide to give out to their teachers. It describes Friendship's unique way of educating and needed to reflect the professional and child-centered academic model.

Faith Farm Teams Action Alert: A Fair Harvest

The five mainline denominations (The Episcopal Church, ELCA, PCUSA, United Methodist Church - General Board of Church and Society, and United Church of Christ) came together to call for "A Fair Harvest" during discussion surrounding the U.S. Farm Bill. We helped with the design of an action alert that went out to churches.

witness for peace newsletter

Witness for Peace (WFP) came to CEDC with a small budget and a need for affordable newsletter design. This newsletter celebrates WFP 25th anniversary.