Crafting Social Stories — NGO visual identity

Context

Crafting Social Stories is a program run by Asociația Antonia that empowers kids in rural Romanian communities through creative expression. Workshops in storytelling, arts, and crafts give children tools for self-expression, confidence, and connection that their schools and environments often can’t provide.

The program sits at the intersection of education and creativity, where a child’s imagination is welcomed and put at the center. Volunteers travel to villages, set up workshops in community centers and schools, and spend weekends building something that lasts far longer than the visit itself.

The challenge

The brand had to speak to two fundamentally different audiences with equal honesty:

• Children: the program’s participants. They needed to see something colorful, inviting, and distinctly theirs. It had to feel like play, not like institution.
• Corporations and institutional donors: the program’s funders. They needed professionalism, impact measurement, and organizational credibility. It had to feel like an investment, not just a feel-good story.

Previous materials kept swinging between these poles: sometimes too playful for boardrooms, sometimes too corporate for classrooms. The identity needed to hold both worlds at once.

Logo architecture

We designed the logo with three symbolic layers that reveal themselves progressively:

Layer 1 — books

At the most literal level, the mark shows open books, the foundation of the program’s mission. Books represent knowledge, stories, and the power of literacy at the heart of every workshop.

Layer 2 — children

The negative space between the books forms silhouettes of children reaching upward. This layer speaks to growth, aspiration, and the program’s focus on lifting kids through creative engagement.

Layer 3 — monogram C.S.S.

The overall form resolves into the initials C.S.S. (Crafting Social Stories). This gives corporate partners the institutional recognition they need while embedding the program’s name right into the visual mark.

The three layers work together so that children see something playful and abstract while adults recognize something sophisticated and intentional. That dual reading was the key design breakthrough.

Color palette

The palette balances warmth with credibility:

• Spanish Orange: energy, creativity, the warmth of a workshop in full swing. This is the brand’s signature color, used for primary accents and calls to action.
• Dark Cyan: depth, trust, the stability institutional partners expect. Used for headlines, formal communications, and backgrounds.
• Licorice: a soft, warm black that grounds the palette without the harshness of true black. Used for body text and detailed elements.
• Seashell: a warm off-white as the primary background, softer than pure white and more inviting for materials children will touch and hold.

We tested the palette across dozens of applications (digital screens, printed flyers, fabric banners, hand-painted workshop signs) to make sure it holds up in every context the program encounters.

Typography

The primary typeface is Area, picked for its geometric clarity and friendly character. It has the structural precision corporate materials demand while staying approachable enough for children’s programming. The generous x-height keeps things readable on everything from large banners to small name tags.

A hand-lettered display variant shows up sparingly for campaign headlines and workshop titles, adding a crafted, human touch that reinforces the program’s emphasis on making things by hand.

Visual approach

The visual language draws from the textures and imperfections of hands-on creative work:

• Textured backgrounds evoking paper, canvas, and craft materials
• Hand-drawn illustrations that feel made, not manufactured
• Photographic overlays blending documentation with artistic expression
• Collage-inspired layouts that mirror the workshop aesthetic

Every piece of communication should feel like it came from the same world where kids are cutting, pasting, painting, and building. The brand embodies the program; it doesn’t just describe it.

Applications

The identity system was applied across:

• Workshop materials: name tags, certificates, activity sheets
• Volunteer recruitment materials
• Corporate partnership decks and impact reports
• Social media templates for documentation and promotion
• Merchandise: t-shirts, tote bags, stickers
• Environmental graphics for workshop spaces

Each application was designed as a template volunteers can customize without design skills, keeping brand consistency even out in the field.

Campaign: “A Story That Changes Lives”

The launch campaign centered on a simple idea: every child has a story worth telling, and every story told with care can change lives, not just the storyteller’s, but everyone who hears it.

Campaign materials featured real stories from workshop participants (their words, their artwork, their voices) presented with the same visual care and respect you’d see in a gallery exhibition. The message was clear: these kids aren’t charity cases. They’re artists, storytellers, and creators whose work deserves to be seen.

The campaign drove a measurable increase in volunteer sign-ups and donor engagement. But the most meaningful impact was harder to measure: volunteers told us they felt a surge of pride and belonging, finally having a visual identity that matched the significance of what they do every weekend in villages across Romania.