Imagining compassion without borders
Led by student Ben Levaton, for more than a year now students at the American School of Paris have been collecting everything from coats, shoes and food to playing cards, books and tents for refugees who are living on the streets of Paris and in refugee camps such as the Calais "Jungle."
This year, Levaton decided to organize a formal club, called "Compassion without Borders." However, they did not have a logo. I am interested in CWB's work so I volunteered to make one.
The creative process I went through to create the Compassion Without Borders logo was quite simple. I began by coming up with different ideas for how to visually show compassion.
Quite quickly I decided that the logo should show two hands clasped together to represent compassion. The first thing I did to create the logo was digitally draw two hands, after that it was a question of which font to use, where to put the writing, and figuring out the background color.
In the beginning, I toyed with the idea of putting a border of dashes to show “without borders.” I scrapped the idea later as I didn’t like the visual aesthetic of it.
I made around four different logos with different background colors, and writing placement. After I compared all the logos with Beatrice, my project teacher and adviser, I finally decided on placing the writing around the two hands, almost like a border. I stuck with a light blue as I felt like it was a calming color that represents good things.
My logos are shown below, from the first three drafts to the final finished version.
