70 Years of Innovation

Commemorating UNICEF’s 70th anniversary in a fun and visual way.

WHAT
To complement and express in our own delightful way our congratulations to UNICEF, the Office of Innovation designed a poster to celebrate UNICEF's 70 years as an innovative change engine. The poster contains over 50 representations of innovations and people, which chime on all of UNICEF’s programmes from education, health, emergencies, water and sanitation and more.

WHY
Design has always played its part in supporting the work of UNICEF since its founding after World War II in 1946. The sale of UNICEF’s endearing postcards and greeting cards has been a key source of fundraising for decades, so we thought what better way to celebrate UNICEF's 70 years as an innovative change engine than through design? We also wanted to flex our creative muscles and produce a piece of work that stands out from the visual identities of our other projects and products.

WHEN
2016

ROLE
ICON DESIGN
ART DIRECTION
GRAPHIC DESIGN

TEAM
MARI NAKANO
SHRUTI KUNDURI
TANYA BHANDARI
TUSHAR GHEI

LINKS
BLOG

Harmozing on one aesthetic is no easy task for four designers. Here’s a little bit about the behind-the-scenes process on how we managed to accomplish the challenge:

Research and crowdsourcing

We reached out to our innovation colleagues to crowdsource and study up on the many innovations that have spawned over the years. We generated a long list, sent out some quick surveys, researched and read publications and articles and then narrowed down innovations that would represent UNICEF’s programmatic areas. We took these ideas and illustrated them into icons and a diverse array of people.

4 designers, 1 style

Developing a system for iconography and agreeing on a direction required us to set-up guidelines that would help us maintain a design consistency. We came up with a few rules to keep our aesthetic consistent, agreeing on things like stroke weight, corner radius degrees and spacing between lines within an object - all perhaps mundane sounding tasks for some, but essential to the design. We were conscious of covering as many programmatic areas as possible and mindful of balancing between how much or little to represent.

Open debate, good rapport

We were not always in the same place at the same time. Communication and establishing a workflow between four designers located in different time zones was a crucial part to making this poster. We had a number of debates over things like typography, Pantone colors, branding and other designerdly nuances. In between it all, we maintained a strict timeline between the rest of our priorities, chatted constantly, and tapped into our colleagues for feedback and debate. What more, our design team utilized our already strong and transparent rapport, which allowed us to make quick, strategic and meaningful decisions.