PARADISE was a project from the European Brain Council (EBC) and funded by the European Union under the 7th framework program, researching psychosocial difficulties that people suffering from brain disorders have in common, in order to raise awareness, improve their daily lives, and overall well-being. The EBC itself is a non profit foundation focusing on research and co-operation to advocate study and awareness of brain diseases. EBC effectively lobbies at the European Union, thus acquiring budget for brain research allocated by the EU. They also conduct events taking about neurological diseases like dementia, creating consciousness of it as a social issue. They wanted to bring such challenges to light so that people become informed and can take action.
The brief
Apart from their established website, EBC wanted to create a new and separate web portal for the project branded as Project Paradise. In this portal, they wanted primarily 3 sections:
- A public area with information to raise awareness, where the general public could also get information about the events and the project itself.
- A members only area where all the professors who were participating in the project could share some news, plan their events, talk, comment and discuss.
- A Content Management System (CMS) to put in all their documents on the website about their research and findings for specific events planned.
graphility steps in
graphility’s Design director Hector Hurtado was commissioned by the EBC for branding, web design, and print collaterals. After the website was designed by graphility, EBC was happy with the results and wanted us to create some printed materials for the events they were planning to host. They wanted us to produce the main brochure talking about the project, as well as posters for the events. We did all of this, and in addition we also took care of the logistics. For example, we were given the date and time of the event with the number of brochures and posters required for the event. Once we had our designs ready and validate we contacted the printers and the logistics people to ship them to the desired location within the specific time for the conferences. In total, we handled over 10000 printed materials. Hence we went a step beyond just design and took care of the facilitation as well.
Duration
The entire project lasted 3 years. The first year was the most active, mostly with the many events covered. The rest was more about maintaining the information architecture of the growing portal, as well as catering to new needs such as a planning section, outlining calendar, etc. The overall result became similar to creating a private social network for participating people who could discuss their ideas, plan events and comment on each other’s findings, share documents as well. Thus it was a network with a controlled number of users.