"Design is thinking made visual." - Saul Bass.
What is Graphic Design?
Above are photos of the pack and invites for the event.
'Soma' is Graphic Design in my eyes.
Soma stands for everything I believe Graphic Design to be:
- Change lives potentially.
- Exceedes your own potential through collaboration.
- Not necessarily about something pretty, but more about producing something that is tangible and has a sense of purpose.
SOMA
Soma is the result of my Semester B work produced in my other module: Professional Practice. The aim of the Professional Practice module was to hold a collaborative event/exhibition through a group collaboration. I worked alongside 2 other graphic designers who I had worked with on projects before: Natasha Tedstill and Uzma Faheem, as well as working with 3 photographers on this project: Katerina Makasis, Andrew Cooper, and Martyn Daujotas.
Between us we are better known as Aspire to Inspire.
We came up with the idea of producing an educational book to send out to a school in Morogoro in Tanzania (which will be happening on the 24th June). After researching the facts. we realised that schoolchildren in countries such as Africa, do not have a very fortunate outcome when it comes to education. English is the secondary language that is required to move into secondary school, however we found the percentage of school children that passed the basics of learning the English language were very very low.
We decided to try and help, we are only students but we aimed to try and inspire the likes of schoolchildren in Africa and Tanzania somehow. Therefore between the 6 of us, we produced an educational book that covered the basics of the English language and numeracy skills. From producing the book, we then decided to provide materials for the children such as an erasers, pencil, and colouring pencil which were then placed into small packs, making it easier to transport the books and materials together. Along with all of these, the packs also include a personal message card which can be written out by anyone who would like to sponsor the funding of making the books and packs. This would then hopefully inspire the children upon recieving the packs, to know that someone from the UK has helped give them thier own book.
Uzma has a friend who is part of an organisation called Raleigh International. The organisation hold a 12 week programme in which people from the organisation go out to countries like Tanzania to help out. During this time, around 3-4 weeks of this programme are spent with schools in areas such as Morogoro, therefore we decided to aim our project at sending out the book with Uzma's friend when she goes out to Tanzania in June.
The word SOMA means 'learn' in Swahili which is the language spoken in Tanzania.
Our main event was a market stall held on April 22nd at Spitalfields Market, not only were we lucky enough to get a free stall, but our intention for the event was to showcase our book Soma and get as many sponsorships and donations at the event as possible, to cover the costs of making the book and packs. The more money we can raise, the more book packs we can send out. We decided to make the project a non profit one, in that all the money raised, goes straight back into the production costs of making the book packs.
So far, we have gained over £220 in donations which is enough to cover the costs of making around 100 book packs already which is incredible, we have also been requested by many people to hold another event to showcase the book so that the people who missed our one day event, can make it to our next one. We have now also had requests to send 50 book packs to Kenya as well as Bangladesh. We gained some great contacts and links, as well as feedback and help, including help with transport links from the UK to Tanzania through a friend of Andrew's who came to the stall.
We have ultimately gained from the module, the ability to keep on producing an ongoing worldwide project. It has exceeded the potential of all 6 members of the group, and I am proud to be a part of Aspire to Inspire. We are going to continue with what we are doing after the module has ended, as we have just planted the seeds into something that can be potentially large worldwide.
I could go on and on about the project, but I will cut it short, by saying... this is graphic design for me.
A few event photos:
