Johnson banks were appointed in the middle of 2006 to help Save the Children in the UK raise their profile.
Save the Children has become slightly forgotten in UK charity circles, and want to be the energetic worldwide voice for children's rights they once were in the early 20th century. They'd found that, even with a name like theirs, people would still ask them 'what do you do?'
A lot of discussion around their purpose and positioning followed, and in late '06 a far more 'agit' stance was signed off by their board. Our task was then how to translate this into a new visual approach, whilst staying close to the global guidelines which centred around their 'outstretched arms' child symbol and the use of Gill Sans.
After some successful experimentation with versions of Gill that we had roughened up a little and hand-drawn, we had the breakthrough thought - let's ask children to save the children.
So we developed a worksheet that we tested then distributed round London schools, which contained light outlines of Gill, and asked children to do their own version.
Here's an excerpt from the worksheet.
This is an excerpt from one of the font pages.
Some kids only managed to draw a symbol. Some managed two weights (including numerals and punctuation - very impressive).
By mid February we had hundreds of examples. We then selected 14 weights and pleaded with Monotype (the original punch cutters for Gill's original) to not only give the project their blessing, but to help digitise the new versions. Luckily they agreed.
Now we have the digital versions and we're beginning to see how the fonts will work in everyday communication. It's very useful having 14 weights of Gill, not just 3, like before.
The fonts will be used in all of Save the Children UK's collateral from now on, and a campaign identity has been developed for the UK which aims to make it it perfectly clear what they do, and how others can get involved.
Hopefully, soon, it will become impossible for someone to ask Save the Children what they do. It will be obvious.