Along the Away

One of the most enjoyable projects I worked on when volunteering at Janaagraha was creating illustrations for a student activity book for the Bala Janaagraha campaign. The book is a support resource for Janaagraha’a civic education program which is responsible for a specially created curriculum being delivered by volunteers to over 15,000 primary school students in Bangalore every year.
 
Here is a little peek at some of the illustrations I created!

These little kid characters were created for a recurring exercise where students have to write down their opinions and ideas on nominated topics.

This activity requires students to match up correct pieces of information.

I created this infographic to illustrate the levels of governance in India, right from the citizen to national government.

This graphic was a fun way to deliver a story piece in an illustrative format.

I also created a series of graphics for recurring headings throughout the book; it was pure fun creating these.

 This was definitely one of my favourite projects I’ve worked on and I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to be involved thanks to my volunteer position. I only wish I had been there longer to work on more of the book, but alas! You can only fit so much into ten weeks (I’m learning to accept the limitations of time!)

It was an extremely busy ten weeks spent volunteering in the Communication Department but I had an absolute blast working on a diverse range of projects with a great group of people. I really enjoyed the work I did and am proud of what I was able to contribute. Here is a snapshot of some of the finished artwork. I designed this logo for the 2011 India Urban Conference of which the Janaagraha Applied Research Programme is co-organising. It was an interesting experience as the brief and approval was done by committee with a number of involved parties including external organisations, but it challenged me to consider multiple priorities and package a large message into a single graphic: the geographical focus, the academic angle and the urban theme. I presented three concepts tying these three aspects together, with an emphasis on connectivity. The final logo was eventually agreed on by all (a concept with urban icons connected together in the shape of India) but the two runner-up logos also received a few votes:

 

Another logo I completed was for the Bribe Bandh campaign organised by Janaagraha’s I Paid a Bribe program. The online petition campaign aimed to collect one million names to put pressure on the Indian government to ratify the UN Convention Against Corruption.

The name Bribe Bandh combines two powerful words: Bribe identifies the form of corruption most rife in India and Bandh is a Hindi word that originally means ‘closed’ but is also the name for a form of protest in the way of a general strike by a community.

The logo needed to be bold and inspire action, and convey the severity of the issue as well as incite a sense of responsibility in the viewer. The final logo took the form of a strike slashed across the A, winning out over the other options which included a mouse cursor arrow and a mouse click hand icon that pointed to the word bribery:

 

I also designed a layout for the campaign’s webpage on the IPAB site; ensuring a strong visual call to action and a simple sign up procedure to engage viewers and get the required results:

Another favourite project (well… maybe they were all favourites!) was my very first project at Janaagraha which had a very tight deadline, resulting in the concept being pitched and approved and the artwork completed within my first week. It was an ideal way to plunge straight into the brand of Janaagraha as well as learn a lot about one of it’s most aggressive and successful campaigns – the anti-corruption website-based I Paid a Bribe. The process was also a wonderful introduction to collaborating with some of Janaagraha’s passionate high-achievers, it was a dynamic and satisfying project to be involved with.

The printed piece was a sign of the campaign’s success. Having gathered statistics that awarded the Bangalore Transport Department the number one corrupt department in India, the I Paid a Bribe campaign lobbied them to address the issue. The Minister for Transport got on board and requested a public education campaign through the Transport Department offices. A brochure explaining citizen rights and expectations of motor authority functions was commissioned, to be printed by the department itself and distributed through the offices, along with prominent posters proclaiming anti-bribe support. This was a huge step forward in the campaign and I was thrilled to be involved in designing the public information brochure.

It was an interesting experience as it was the first time I had designed a printed piece that would incorporate two languages – I designed a folding format with an English side and a Kannada side. I conceptualised the theme of bribery entwined with the process of accessing motor rights in India, creating a graphic which was a custom tyre mark made with the Indian Rupee symbol. I also focused on creating clean, streamlined flow charts as there was a lot of procedural information to communicate without scaring the reader away. I was really happy with the end product as was the internal team and the representatives from the motor authority who were presented with the brochure by the IPAB team.

Another project that I spent a significant amount of time working on was for the Me and My City school student activity book. I have some illustrations to showcase from this project but they’ll follow in another post.