An ethical, social enterprise, marketing in handmade products from around the globe, created by artisans that use traditional forms of craftsmanship, many in which are a dying art.
Having worked with Ethiqana for the past six months as the creative design lead - I have worked on many design projects, from 2D animated instagram reels to product image editing - Much of my role also included social media marketing, in an effort to increase sales for the business. Ethiqana is a business run with passionate ethical values at its core, in which every minute detail of design needs to represent. Being a social enterprise, Ethiqana posses transparent social and environmental goals, the majority of profits made are reinvested into the amazing artisans that create the products.
Ethiqana is widely active on social media, social media is a tool not only used to increase the the possibility of customer reach but to share awareness of the positive impacts the company makes. For a post demonstrating ways in which Ethiqana abides by the World Fair Trade principles, I was briefed in creating two women that represented the Indian artisans that create many of Ethiqana's products. By using in-trend empty line art, this created a simple yet stylish image that when used with a coloured background, the women and their outfits beautifully come to life.
A large quantity of my time was spent editing images of products onto either different backgrounds or people that would represent the purpose of the product. The background and people you see in the images were downloaded from Pixel.
Ethiqana sells many cards - I was briefed to create small collections of each category (birthdays, Christmas, Valentines day, etc), each collection showcased a few best sellers with a background that promoted a realistic feel to the image.
For products, such as the necklace and child's toy - I was briefed into creating lifestyle perspectives of the products, by doing so customers were more likely to visualise their need of the product, as well as its usage.
During my time at Ethiqana, I was occasionally tasked with creating new ideas for social media posts and stories - typically with instagram as a priority due to it being the most prominent platform used. Ideas such as animated logo's, for the ending of instagram reels and gifs to be used during videos. The gifs artistic background correlates to the handmade aspect of the brand. Most projects required a decorative feel to the completed design, therefore providing a consistent theme throughout the company's social media presence.
Besides gifs and animated logo's, I also created emotive and topical trend videos, this was an easy way to create new ideas that had high effectiveness on social media. Emotive videos were also used to tell a short narrative, for example, through a video i was able to explain the origin of the cards creation and it's designers backstory. Presenting the positive impacts each card sale makes would enable the customer to understand what they could do to help - Ethiqana's goals and values, to provide sustainable livelihoods would also emphasised.
Continuously finding intuitive ways to promote products on social media - adding illustrations breathed life into the ordinary.
Using current topical events to our advantage, we would strategise a plan of how we could market such events - Boris Johnson's Downing street refurb, back in May 2021, being a prime example. Ethiqana strongly values politically left ideals, while subtly hinting this via the comic humour of the illustration and the suggestion within the text. The illustrated pillow seen within the image is in fact a product sold be Ethiqana. Using this current event, we were able to create trafficking to the website for home decorations, while at the same time, demonstrating the important Ethiqana values to the social media audience.
My biggest projects involved creating animations for two events - Earth day 2021 and a charity fundraiser for artisans struggling in India during the pandemic.
Extensive planning went into both projects but one issue, that being the lack of time, related to both projects. The Earth Day animation was scripted, storyboarded and animated within a week. This was due to an idea for Earth day being discussed a week before its date - this left little time for execution. Some minor issues such as alignment and timing needed to be cleaned up for a more professional outcome. For example, the crabs legs drift to the right and needed more time to perfect its physics. Certain animated sentences, needed adjusting - the third line, " For issues such as" needed less onscreen time as it takes longer to fade than its following sentence.
The fundraiser animation (right) was one I believed to be more successful. I had two weeks to plan, design and animate which meant an altogether better outcome but one issue we had was changes to the script - the script is an aspect of pre-production that needs to be completed first but due to last minute team changes, was completed much later. The text ended up fighting for visual dominance with the animation - a big no no... The text can be hard to read and when read, parts of the animation would be missed. If the script was added earlier, the animation would have been molded around the script to give the appropriate timing for both aspects of the video to not visually challenge each other. Even better, the text could have been used as a spoken script, due to it being long sentences, which would have been a perfect solution to the issue, as therefore, no text would be seen onscreen.