South Africa held its first 8-i on Saturday, 20 May 2017, where five NGOs gathered with students from Stellenbosch Academy of Design and Photography to create websites, wireframes and marketing collateral.
Stellenbosch Academy of Design and Photography’s head of graphic design, Cashandra Willemse and student, Sarah Cuppleditch created a new letterhead for Pebbles Project, as well as a PowerPoint template, tote bag print and marketing collateral. “Designers and makers alike are the change makers within our current economies. It is through creative innovation and application that communities will adjust and the effects of positive creative transformation will run through the veins of our nation. Thank you to 8-i that afforded us the opportunity to assist and teach,” said Willemse.
Design students Ashleigh Farthing, Coerine Hattingh, Chenel Duncker and Jeanique Strydom worked together on the Community Keepers brief. In the eight hours, they created a wireframe for a student appointment app; wayfinding to lead students to the safe offices; posters for the schools; donation requests for patrons to restaurants that support Community Keepers and signage to highlight the support that these restaurants give to their favourite NGO.
“Community Keepers was privileged to be selected as one of the beneficiaries for the first 8-i initiative to be held in South Africa. Along with a team of talented design students, incredible and useful content was created to support Community Keeper’s online and tangible marketing projects and to raise awareness within the schools that we work of our services available to at-risk learners. The students also created a self-referral app for learners to refer themselves, confidentially, to our counselling offices should they require psychological support services. 8-i South Africa was a smoothly run and very beneficial experience for us and we are so grateful for the opportunity to have been a part of it,” said Bridgette Wirth of Community Keepers.
Jeroen Slee assisted Moija van Zyl from Eduvate to publish her designed Wordpress site, as well as adding some personalised design work. Slee taught van Zyl about working in Wordpress and the new Eduvate site which will go live soon.
For Feeding In Action, design team duo Nerien Pesch and Amy Capendale designed a brochure and banner to spread the word about Feeding in Action and the work it does.
Stories Unite Us worked with an illustrator and Stellenbosch Academy of Design head of multimedia, Wessie van der Westhuizen to create e-books. Illustrator, Megan Vermaak, created a handwritten font and design elements, which were digitised by Westhuizen. “It was a privilege to be part of the first 8-i project in South Africa. The student’s enthusiasm was reflected in the quality of work they produced on the day. Thank you to all,” said Vladimira Bajerovska of Stories Unite Us.
“I found it incredible to do work for 'real life', instead of just working on made up briefs within the environment of a classroom. I learnt so much through this experience and loved working with such an inspiring NGO. Opportunities like these do not come around every day and I feel blessed to have been a part of 8-i,” added Vermaak.
8-i South Africa’s co-lead, Micheline Frantz presented a workshop titled Social Media 1-on-1 to the NGOs and had an hour digital strategy meeting with each of them to provide them with the tools to keep growing their digital footprint and take their organisations further.
“The NGOs we partnered with have been doing inspiring work in Stellenbosch and their stories deserve to be told. The 1-on-1 sessions aimed to equip them with the digital tools to tell these stories on platforms that have a broadened reach and thus, a broadened network for support,” said Frantz.
“Having seen the work by Stellenbosch Academy of Design, I knew that the standards would be high. What I did not expect was the volume of work. The students entered the day as professional designers and created high quality work with clients,” said Chantal Louw. “We will host another 8-i in October 2017.”
