2021 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

CHALLENGE & INSIGHT
The Canadian National Institute for the Blind has been supporting the visually impaired community for over a hundred years. That support isn’t just about aiding people with sight loss. The CNIB understands that true progress comes from bridging the gap between sighted and visually impaired communities. The less the visually impaired community is an island, the more understanding, inclusivity, and acceptance grow in society.

The brand focuses on true inclusivity, so when it came to the brand identity, it wasn’t enough to just create versions for sighted and visually impaired audiences. The challenge was: can it make a brand identity that’s as meaningful to someone who is sighted as it is to someone who can’t see? Can it make it something they all experience equally?

The answer? Don’t create a more inclusive visual identity. Don’t create a visual identity at all. Instead, create a brand identity that’s not designed to be seen.

EXECUTION
Zerotrillion created the first tactile brand identity – a texture that tells the story of the CNIB with touch. Whether you’re visually impaired, blind or sighted, you feel the same experience.

And it wasn’t designed for the visually impaired community. It was designed by them at the CNIB Community Hub in Toronto. The agency conducted a co-creation session with members of both the sighted and visually impaired communities to explore what the CNIB means to them and how it could represent that richness as a texture.

They told the team that the CNIB helps them overcome thousands of daily challenges of sight loss – helping create order from the chaos of those daily struggles. Together with the community, Zerotrillion explored different textures and materials to design a tactile brand to tell the story.

The result is a pattern of thousands of small rough shapes that, as you run your fingers across them, become more orderly and harmonized. It reflects how the CNIB turns stumbling blocks into stepping stones.

To apply it, the shop pioneered a new use for raised-polymer printing. While originally designed to produce braille, it tweaked the technology to become a type of 3D printer that could build the new tactile identity on brand artifacts – from handrails that guide the visually impaired into the community hubs, to posters, phone cases, business cards and more.

The identity tells the story of the CNIB. But what’s even more meaningful is that whether you’re blind, visually impaired, or sighted, you feel the story just the same. It’s not a more inclusive identity; it’s an inclusive identity. The brand previewed it at the Toronto Community Hub and launched the campaign for Canada’s National Accessibility Week.

IMPACT
The new identity was met with tremendous positivity and excitement from community members, staff, executives and the public. What was most touching was seeing how attendees with visually impairment interacted with the texture. Touching it, they were surprised, intrigued, curious, and moved. It captured a feeling that was so personal to them, and many told the brand how proud they were that it was made by the community itself.

Credits

COMISSIONING CLIENT: CNIB Foundation (Canadian National Institute for the Blind)

ADVERTISING AGENCY: Zerotrillion
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER: Alex Paquin
GLOBAL CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Adam Fierman
EXECUTIVE STRATEGY DIRECTOR: Aubrey Podolsky
BUSINESS DIRECTOR: Elysia Ravenscroft
ART DIRECTOR: David Hong
MEDIA AGENCY: Zerotrillion

PRODUCTION HOUSE: Makers
DIRECTOR: Sean Stiller
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Kirsten White
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Sarah Lasch
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER: Jess Parsons

EDIT COMPANY: AlterEgo Post
PR AGENCY: Zerotrillion