Degree Type

Honors Capstone Project

Date of Submission

Spring 5-1-2013

Capstone Advisor

Professor Sherri Taylor

Honors Reader

Professor Jeff Passetti

Capstone Major

Graphic Design

Capstone College

Public Communications

Audio/Visual Component

no

Capstone Prize Winner

no

Won Capstone Funding

no

Honors Categories

Creative

Subject Categories

Art and Design | Education | Graphic Design

Abstract

My Honors Capstone Project is entitled “Branding and Web Design for Inkululeko: With Freedom Comes Hope.” I worked with a Syracuse native, Jason Torreano, who recently started up an education nonprofit in Grahamstown, South Africa. This program is called Inkululeko, which, in the local Xhosa language, means “freedom.” The organization seeks to combat the inequalities in education that are a result of Apartheid in South Africa. They operate under the belief that anyone deserves a quality education, and that education is the key to success in a place where people have been denied it for so long.

This project allowed me to combine my interest in education with my skills in graphic design. I have been tutoring students from Somalia for the past four years at Syracuse, and although their situation is different, I have realized how important education is to a child or teen’s success. So I was drawn to this project because it allowed me to mix two of my passions together for a good cause.

I did the majority of my work on this project when school was not in session, because I knew that this was the only time I would be able to design with a clear head. I designed the logo over winter break of my junior year, exchanging ideas with Jason the whole time. I began with sketches, and once we had settled on one that we liked, I began adding colors and typefaces. The finished product is an abstract combination of a sun emerging from a book. As per Jason’s request, the logo’s colors are bright (red, orange and yellow) and evoke a message of hope, change and movement.

After I returned from studying abroad in the spring of my junior year, I began work on Inkululeko’s website. I had never designed a real website before, only non-functional mock-ups for class. Since I did not know how to code in HTML/CSS, I enlisted the help of a friend and iSchool student, Julie Dellinger, to code the site for me. After I designed each page in Adobe InDesign, I would send them to her to start coding. The process took the majority of the summer, and extended into the school year. During the fall of my senior year, I took a basic web design class, and am now able to make minor updates to the site at Jason’s request. In the future, Julie plans to create a Wordpress theme from the site, which would allow anyone – even those with no background in web design – to edit the site. In this way, it would function almost like a blog. Additionally, Jason has hired an intern to take my place next year, and I have been training this student and providing her with the necessary materials to carry on what I have started with Inkululeko.

View the site: http://www.inkululeko.org/

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.