My Role

Project Director

Project Duration

One Week

Problem

This was the first Project Resound held outside of the US. We were a design team within a larger team from Savannah's Community Bible Church. Together we headed to Nagarote, Nicaragua to do good works. including… ministerial training, financial classes, and a day camp for children. After a immersive tour of sites in Managua and the surrounding countryside we went to work.

The Project Resound team was asked to serve the Cooperative Multifuncional Jesucristo es el Señor, R.L., in a rebranding project that included the redesign of the logo, a web page design prototype and collateral pieces including brochures and slide decks. The cooperative is a worthy financial institution that helped the community by making micro-loans to entrepreneurs. It had a good brand image in the community but needed a better brand identity.

Approach

We found that the identity was sending the wrong message. We wanted provide a context of security and caring for people. The photographic logo was overly aggressive and the slide deck was difficult to read, as it had larger rivers of text and multiple fonts that conflicted with one another. The depiction of coinage created an overwhelming sense of money over caring.

Solution

We decided to change the context of the logo by keeping the eagle strong, yet making it friendlier. For the slide deck, we took design inspiration from local colors and architecture to make it look familiar and friendly. It was made more palatable by managing the content—deleting much of the unnecessary information. We included testimonials of satisfied and thankful clients making it easy to connect to the message of helping the community. Overall, the slide deck is a more approachable and professional design. The prototype of a web page and a brochure design rounded out the list of deliverables that the organization had requested.

Because we had just a bit of time left over, we decided to surprise the owner of a local mini mart with a Random Act of Design (RAD). During the week we made friends with the owner of Mini Super Mexico (a convenience store), We found that the shop owner was from Mexico and that he needed a logo. So we combined a Nicaraguan bird with a Mexican eagle—he didn’t expect it and was thrilled with our effort!

The prototypes were completed in 4 days in extreme heat on on outdoor tin-roofed porch. Nicaragua was beautiful, but it was hot! We were sweaty, but happy that we had a ceiling fan to cool us and wi-fi to help us get the job done!

Result

There are feasibility issues and technical challenges that had to be overcome before the designs could be implemented. Even the annual expense of hosting the website was considered expensive. One of the primary lessons that Project Resound has learned is that we must offer continued monetary and technical support in order to increase the chances of designs being implemented.