Typographic detail from The Journey, a short film about sex traffiking by Richard Jobson

One of the many benefits of the donated design projects we undertake is the opportunity to become aware of and get involved in campaigns and causes that might otherwise slip under our radar.

The last quarter of 2009 saw us immersed in one such project, producing supporting typography for a harrowing sex-trafficking campaign film for The Journey, in which the audience follows one girl’s sad plight.

Written and directed by Richard Jobson, produced by Quiet Storm Films, and starring Emma Thompson, this shocking 15 minute short provocatively reveals the ugly reality behind this vile trade.

On this occasion, Zerofee were asked to assist with the typographic treatment of ten key phrases which described the impact of sex trafficking on its victims. We referenced the style and qualities of shipping container markings and information, as these containers are often used by traffickers as a form of transport to smuggle many of these young women across Europe. These graphics were then, sensitively, integrated and mapped into their environments by editor, David Owen, and compositor, Nick Barnes.

The film can now be viewed on The Guardian website with our main contribution seen around the 11:20 mark. The film is harrowing, graphic and not safe for work or children, so please be careful when and where you watch it. The typographic treatment also found its way into Richard Ashcroft’s video for his supporting song from the film’s soundtrack, seen around the 3:36 mark.

Identity and website for Blue Monday

For some of us, coming back to work after the Christmas and New Year’s break is, at the very least, a grind. Often gloomy and cold, the season’s inevitable over-indulgence can leave many of us willing the end of January and the welcome sight of our next pay cheques. So, with this in mind, Blue Monday was created as an antidote to this notoriously difficult time of year – another fabulous, socially-focussed project created by People United.

Launching on January 25th 2010, everyone can get involved. Through even the simplest of gestures, a usually troublesome Monday, can be turned into an inspirational day, promoting, trust, friendship and human connections.

As soon as we heard about the project we connected with it, providing design donation in the form of brand identity and supporting website. Let’s face it – the last couple of years have been somewhat challenging, so it’s great to get involved in something with such a positive message at its heart.

The identity needed to show characteristics of strength and lightheartedness, whilst appealing to as broad an audience as possible. Swapping the counters of a heavy slab serif ‘B’ for hand-rendered, classic cloud shapes and pairing a vibrant blue with an almost-black, resulted in a strong visual language that should see Blue Monday through many years of development and growth. With weather featuring prominently across all Blue Monday’s assets, the visual language consistently marks the tension between happiness and sadness. Persuasive, uplifting copy was kindly supplied by Mike Reed of Reed Words.

The outcome is positive and playful, but also authoritative. Naturally, we’re pleased that siteInspire liked it too. Hopefully, all of this will encourage involvement in the project and build a growing and consistent community of positivity that can tackle the season’s heaviness head on.

Dynamic identity for Converge, a series of events exploring the crossover between photography, filmmaking and CG

Filmmakers are discovering the freedom of low-cost, high-quality methods of realising their ideas with equipment more routinely associated with stills photography – SLR-sized cameras, prime and zoom lenses and a highly-mobile mentality.

We recently worked on the identity for ‘Converge’, a series of events exploring this emerging crossover between photography, filmmaking and CG. It was an unusual project for us in the sense that we only developed and delivered the central mark – a converging, dynamic RGB arrangement that can be seen as either a 2D graphic or 3D ‘cubes’ – and suggestion for accompanying typography – before the outcome left our studio and influence.

We don’t like to send our offspring away from home and out to work before they’re completely equipped for life. Hopefully, they’ve left us well-dressed and, perhaps, they’ll come back home to visit us in the future for a bit more TLC.

Congratulations to the other winners: Barbara Brown, John Hamilton, TILT Design, Why Not Associates, Micha Weidmann Studio and Mat Maitland.

A few months ago Zerofee entered Just Add Stock, an Eye Magazine competition judged by key figures in the design industry – Aporva Baxi, Pam Bowman, Deyan Sudjic and Tom Hind, Director of Photography at Getty Images. On this occasion the jurors sought work which successfully and innovatively used stock imagery combined with high-calibre design values.

This prestigious design publication has always been of great importance to us and continues to hold its own in an increasingly competitive and difficult marketplace. Normally, time (or principles) wouldn’t allow us to entertain entering awards schemes but, since a large percentage of our work, by necessity, features stock imagery, we felt Just Add Stock was an important award to participate in.

Not ones to normally blow our own trumpet, on this occasion we feel the outcome certainly warrants mention, as the panel awarded us outright winners in the Reports and Brochures category for our design donation work on a broadsheet publication to support the Angola 3 campaign. We’re also excited to see Zerofee and this project featured on the Eye Blog as an extension of the magazine coverage.

As with all the work that’s undertaken by Zerofee, we’re choosy about who we work with and their overall background story – their social/environmental footprint. Once a project is accepted, donated or commercial, we put all efforts into creating the best solution, and in this case, that effort culminated in a powerful, printed outcome – we’re thrilled to have it recognised by key industry figures.

The project was created for Bondage for Freedom, a campaign collective brought together by Sam Roddick and Jamie Catto. We’ve previously posted on the subject of the campaign and the design solution so, if you’d like to learn a bit more about the Angola 3 and the design decisions that we implemented, take a look here.

TRAID have traditionally stayed in touch with supporters with a straightforward A4 newsletter, produced entirely in–house. We’ve worked with them to produce a 16 page, tabloid format replacement for this called ‘Behind The Seams’, with design values that reflect TRAID’s interests and standards – more space, more imagery, more style, but not at the expense of detail about projects that they’ve funded or achievements they’ve made.

Rather than just dropping through letterboxes, they will also soon be available in all of TRAID’s stores around London and Brighton. Alongside current news, every issue will carry fundamental details about TRAID’s objectives and processes, as the highstreet stores continually attract custom from shoppers who love the clothes and experience, but want to learn more about the story. The new format allows staff to press the answers into the customer’s hands at the tillpoint.

Printed on 48gsm recycled newsprint, we’ve tried to play to the strengths of the medium, with black and white imagery, combined with areas of bright, largely pure C,M or Y ‘lenses’ of colour which also carry folio numbers. While there’s a solid grid behind the whole document, TRAID’s eclectic nature is seen in a mixture of playful typefaces and ephemeral shapes. Generally, the design has survived the bumpy ride of web offset printing pretty admirably. Hopefully, each following issue will diversify in certain respects, creating a series which TRAID fans might like to collect.

You can have a browse of a lo-res PDF below (if you’re sporting a Flash plugin) courtesy of Issuu. Really interested parties might like to click it to go full-screen, so the text can be seen more clearly (try to ignore any other publications that appear on the right hand side, their not with us, we can assure you…). Anyone after a physical copy might like to pop into one of TRAID’s shops, but you’ll have to be quick.

The Angola 3 – Robert King, Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace – were all imprisoned on different charges in Louisiana’s Angola prison in the late 1960s. In 1972, Albert and Herman were convicted of the murder of a prison guard; Robert was linked to the case by the authorities, but not charged. As a result, all three were removed to solitary confinement and suffered inhumane and unjust treatment lasting, in the case of Robert King (released after pleading a lesser charge), almost 30 years. Albert and Herman spent 36 years in such conditions, only being removed to maximum security when lawyers and activists took up their cases and brought the details of their charges and trials into question. They remain behind bars. Robert King has, since his release, worked to bring attention to the plight of the Angola 3 and the charges against Albert were dropped in March 2008. Despite this, he and Herman remain incarcerated.

Zerofee had an opportunity in the summer of 2008 to contribute to the ongoing appeal for justice for the Angola 3 by donating awareness-raising, broadsheet format literature designed in conjunction with Bondage for Freedom, Coco de Mer’s campaigning organisation lead by Sam Roddick. We worked closely with Sam to design and produce the broadsheet in the space of a single weekend and the outcome is a 12 page narrative by Robert King, accompanied by facts about the Angola 3, their case and the situations faced by others like them in the US prison system.

The broadsheet is a good example of how creative freedom, focussed with time and budgetary pressure, coupled with a great client can result in powerful, donated design work that helped bring a cause to the attention of many people who would not, perhaps, have shown interest. Initially distributed at protests, but since reprinted in a smaller tabloid format for various other situations, it has been an extremely positive project for us and the visual/tactile result is one we’re particularly proud of. The typographic treatment (featuring Rian Hughes’ Hawksmoor and Zuzana Licko’s Mrs Eaves) resonated with those involved in the ongoing campaign and was later applied to a very quick title sequence (read: briefed and completed in a matter of hours) for a music video made by Quiet Storm Films called ‘Bars’:

For more information about the Angola 3, please visit www.angola3.org

Besides their presence on the highstreets of London and Brighton, TRAID extend their mission to educate on the subjects of world poverty and the environment to secondary schools. The sessions, delivered in person by TRAID, have proven very popular and help to get young people to think about the impact of their fashion and recycling choices on the world at large. However, with over 3200 secondary schools in the UK, it’s impossible for TRAID to attend every classroom. To meet the demand for their lessons and activities, we’ve helped them create ‘Behind the Seams’, an education pack which provides the information and structure to enable teachers to deliver the same insights and messages of sustainability.

The pack, produced almost entirely with recycled and/or sustainably-sourced materials (right down to the Cellogreen, a compostable gloss, silk and matt laminate) and features, amongst other things consciousness-raising posters, lesson plans, DVD and a current TRAIDremade collection – a great way of demonstrating that recycled, environmentally friendly fashion can be contemporary and as beautifully shot and presented as any other.

Hopefully, the materials and lessons they support will make young people think about their role in the fashion industry, either as a direct participant or – almost unavoidably – as a consumer. One of the posters features a boy similar to the young people they’re intended for, except he was ‘bought’ for £80 and sews cheap garments for the west in conditions that make the average school look magnificent. Hopefully, the delivery of messages like this will move even the most reluctant student to be grateful for an opportunity to be in class today.

We’re believers in the positive impact of becoming ‘close’ to our clients – not in a sinister, stalking manner – but in the sense of developing personal concern for their well–being as an organisation or business. It’s one thing to care about the success of your work for them, but more important to be able to care about how well they perform. Having a genuine investment of that kind is reflected in the creative work you deliver for your client as a designer. It helps if the client in question does good work for good causes, of course.

Zerofee has been working with TRAID in various guises since their inception ten years ago. They’ve flown by, because we’ve always had fun with them. Something we’ve been longing to tackle for a number of years is a ‘refurbishment’ of their identity; the original had been very popular but, after a decade, was looking tired and in need of an overhaul. Retaining the central idea, visual language and well-recognised colour palette (with a subtle tweak to address some previous CMYK weakness) were fundamental requirements and the result sees its first major outing in the launch of TRAID’s new Camden shop – appropriately, their tenth in their tenth birthday year.

We think the new identity retains all the positive characteristics of the original while visually simplifying, strengthening and modernising it for another decade. It’s been a fantastic challenge to implement the new identity in this retail environment; projecting signs, window displays, swing tags, posters and mass of other less visible, but no less important manifestations. We’re looking forward to seeing it put into effect at other locations soon and, by all accounts, the Camden shop is already doing well.

Zerofee is also involved in an ongoing programme of work that sees the identity roll out across a range of requirements (including a suite of materials for TRAID’s educational program) that test its flexibility and, without any hesitation, we can say we’re enjoying every minute of it. We’re really proud to be associated with a group of people who have been at the forefront of an effort to raise the profile of the environmental and social impact of the fashion industry and have worked incredibly hard to give London (and Brighton) an opportunity to shop sustainably and look incredible. Our relationship with TRAID is a perfect example of what we love to do – challenging, progressive and ethically sound work for an organisation that we feel close to and makes us feel like we’re part of their team.

The photos in this post are shot by the wonderful Caroline Purday (except where indicated) and the TRAID Camden shop architectural design was undertaken by Burogloo, with signage and vinyl work produced by AJ Darling & Sons.