Jane Goodall Institute Don't Let Them Disappear branding + campaign

Dr Jane Goodall is one of the world’s most famous conservationists and scientists. She embarked on her pioneering research of wild chimpanzees in 1960, and 58 years later, Jane still spends over 300 days a year on the road in her relentless pursuit for conservation, research and sustainability development.

With a shared passion for conservation, existing client Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, partnered with the Jane Goodall Institute for a campaign to raise awareness for ape conservation and their habitats. Superfried had worked with the DiCaprio Foundation on many successful projects – LEAF . World Oceans Day . Sharks . Elephants . QRFN. So they commissioned graphic design agency Superfried to develop the design, brand identity and promo animation for a t-shirt flash sale in association with Represent.

If possible the design solution should represent all of the following apes – Gorillas, Chimpanzees, Orangutans, Gibbons, and Bonobos. This was tricky and various design iterations were either too complex or too fun for the gravitas of the message.

Connection to their habitat led to the idea of their forms emerging from smoke due to deforestation. However, initial blurred, smokey styles would not work for a screen-printed t-shirt. After various design iterations, a vector-based illustration style was developed that successfully conveyed the fluid nature of the emerging smoke. Inspired by the elongated form of the forest trees, bespoke typography in a condensed, high-impact type style was developed for the key campaign logotype design – Don’t Let Them Disappear.

Liaison with Represent highlighted technical constraints, so multiple re-draws of the illustration style ensued to reduce path density / cross overs and increase negative spaces. In Represent’s tireless perseverance to ensure the creative solution would work, they proposed splitting the paths into two groups, with the less significant printed in a pale grey to reduce the contrast with the garment colour, creating a sense of depth.

Moving onto marketing and promotion, one of the most compelling characteristics of smoke is the way it moves. So I decided to see if it would be possible to animate the illustration style. Technical limitations prevented the use of tapered paths, so after another re-draw and 80 trim paths the desired effect was finally achieved for the two promotional animated adverts.

In addition to the t-shirt an idea for a potential poster print was proposed to be sold at a later date. To increase the appeal FoilCo suggested printing them in foil and kindly ran a startling test of the final creative solution in silver on black stock.