Through our work with Andrea Armsden on the Tous project, we were introduced to
The Naked Heart Foundation - a charity set up by supermodel Natalia Vodianova.
Natalia grew up in poverty in Nizhny Novgorod - Russia's 4th largest city, population 1.27 million - with her mother and two sisters, one of whom has cerebral palsy. Natalia experienced at first hand the effects of play deprivation, working to help pay the bills from a young age, and too afraid to play out on the street. It was these childhood experiences that in 2005 pushed Natalia to create the Naked Heart Foundation to bring safe outdoor play into the lives of underprivileged children in her home country. As one of the world's most successful models and a mother to three children of her own, Natalia vowed to become a bridge between the international fashion world and the needs of Russian children.
The NHF approached us to take a re-look at their corporate identity and in particular their website - the main communication tool for the brand. It was clear to us that their branding was somewhat confused - with lots of incoherency and leftovers from previous identities. The site also needed to be brought up to date in terms of its technology and social networking capabilities. Through a series of workshops with them, we developed four routes, exploring themes of photography, illustration, typography and a look back at Russian Constructivism.
Andrea Armsden and her photographer Darren Bull were commissioned by the NHF to create a short documentary film following Natalia on her visits to their recent play park openings in Russia. Shooting in 5D, they managed to capture intimate moments of the children playing in the newly built parks. We took stills from their shoot and developed the new, much simpler branding and website design around this photographic route.
In the development of the site itself we incorporated their feeds from
twitter,
flickr and
vimeo. Plus we created a map to explore the locations of the play parks using the
Googlemaps API and incorporating their relevant flickr images.
This year as part of Paris Fashion Week Naked Heart are organising a sponsored half marathon through the streets of Paris to help raise funds for the charity. Kevin and Tom are tasking part and you can sponsor them here
www.justgiving.com/Kin-NakedHeart
