client / Leri for Life
what / identity redesign, website, online manual
Leri for Life means: Life long Learning. It’s an educational method based on the potential of learning as a (local) community. The Leri for Life program aims to enhance economic opportunities for people in the inland of Suriname, teaching them to discover their own talents and qualities and to develop them.
BOA productions commissioned Studio van Amsterdam to redesign the Leri for Life method manual and develop a new website so the manual could be distributed (and read) more easily in the inlands of Suriname. This manual was developed between 2005 and 2011 in six villages in Suriname, to prepare young children (toddlers) for primary school. Following this pre-school program should encourage children to do better at school and prevent them from dropping out later on.
The old logo was a bit wild and colourful (see it here). First, i had to create a solid identity ‘baseline’ to work with. So first the logo and color scheme had to be redesigned, so that the look would be more consistent and easier to work with.
I chose a simple color scheme and (semi) playful font, not too serious, and too crazy either. With this in hand, i was able to start working on the manual, which would prove to be a much larger effort.
The original Leri for Life manual word file contained about 100 pages of text and (hires) images. It had to be stripped of all unnecessary content and boiled down to the bare essence, the text. Visually, a lot needed to be done, so first I needed a lot more (and better) images to design the manual. The delivery of images from the inlands Suriname proved to take a long time (no surprise i guess), so the process was delayed for some time. In the mean time, the website was developed using the new identity.
I designed a more fresh, condensed publication (49 pages) in Dutch and English (so two different layouts) that’s easy to read and can be downloaded quickly due to the small file size. In the inlands of Suriname there aren’t a lot of superfast desktop computers, but many people do have cellphones. Because the cellphone reception isn’t always optimal here, the small file size of the LFL manual simplified the distribution, enabling people to read the manual online or download it and read it offline.
