Mellon Educate

Mellon Educate, with Niall Mellon at its helm, was set up to help improve the education of those living in terrible slum conditions in Kenya and South Africa. Over 350 volunteer signed up, through Mellon Educate, to volunteer for a building blitz that would see them put their skills, sweat and tears into building much needed new schools.

Our Challenge

We were tasked with creating a distinct brand identity that would capture succinctly the purpose of this worthy new initiative and act as a call to action for volunteers and support.

Our Solution

Our approach was to develop a creative concept that would capture that strong, emotive rallying cry and strike a deep emotional chord among potential volunteers and donors. But we also needed to ensure that the identity has a wide stretch and appeal, being easily understood across many different nationalities.

Visual Rallying Cry

We focused in on the symbolism of that simple, yet universal act of putting your hand up. This action is understood across most cultures and territories and is also synonymous with the classroom environment.

We really wanted to showcase all the different personalities, nationalities and walks of life coming together and working for a common cause. To create a sense excitement and pride in that act of putting your hand up and getting involved.

The bold colours of the stretching hands were stacked side by side to represent the building blocks, reaching up proudly and confidently. The result was an all encompassing visual rallying call, targeting everyone who had a skill to offer or money to donate.

We’re proud to say that this identity was shortlisted for the IDI Design Awards, 2013.