Forestdale is a non-profit foster care and family services agency dedicated to strengthening families living in Queens, NYC. Its a complex organization, tackling with poverty, family trauma and child depression and they needed assistance in creating a brochure that would help their multi-faceted mission clearly and concisely.
The first step in designing the brochure was to understand the complexity of the organization and breaking it down into something much simpler and easy to follow. In order to make this into a narrative, I drew a parallel story that explained four easy steps to nurture the life of a sapling. The design was created following the already set brand guidelines including font usage, colors and graphic elements.
The brochure opened up sequentially into a concertina book that revealed 4 steps to nurturing the life of a dying sapling. These were tied into the 4 service offerings Forestdale provides for complete child and family development:
Step 1: Move your sapling to a sunny spot.
Parallel: Providing safe and stable homes through Forestdale's Foster Care & Adoption.
Step 2: Water Every day.
Parallel: Encoraging strong parents through Forestdale's Fathering Inititative.
Step 3: Shelter from the storm.
Parallel: Intervening early through Forestdale's Preventive Family Services.
Step 4: Nourish & Encourage.
Parallel: Boostng young parents through Forestdale's Teen Parents program.
Each fold reveals a negative and a positive impact by displaying the graphic of a dying plant and a trivia on one side and the positive change that Forestdale's program could bring along with a growing plant graphic on the other side. In short, one side of the book portrayed the negative and the other portrayed the positive while the simple act of opening the book reveals both these sides together.
Result: The director of the organization mentioned in their annual gala in reference to the New York City funding towards their organization - "I wasn't sure if we will continue getting the grant before we sent that brochure to them. But when they responded saying 'good stuff', which is very unlikely of them, I knew we are in a good place."
Credits: Taproot team - Alan (Account Director), Rosalind (Project Manager), Anuja (Graphic Designer) & Wilhelm (Photographer)
