active faith communities are a government-funded organisation who work with groups from many faith traditions helping them realise their potential in transforming communities. they will help groups who have ideas for community centres, youth work, parent and child groups, work with the elderly, healthy living initiatives - ideas that can play a positive role in society.

we were invited to contribute ideas as part of a review of their image and promotional material. some form of leaflet was seen as essential but there was also the realisation that leaflets are often filed away or slipped into drawers and never seen again. something we’d noticed working with many clients in the charitable and religious sectors was that office walls are usually personalised with inspiring images and quotes - quite often just printed out from a word processing program. so why not provide something both inspiring and beautiful to put up on walls that also kept active faiths contact details close to hand?

finding a quote that embodied the aspirations of the organisation but was not deemed too exclusive to any one religion was going to be tricky. in fact we could only think of a few people who are perceived to have transcended their personal beliefs and speak to all people regardless of faith, nelson mandela being an obvious example. we found this quote by ghandi which was thought to be perfect (you see - we do more than just design…).

working with a translator we produced a multi-lingual leaflet-cum-poster appropriate to the west yorkshire communities in which active faiths works. it was also a great opportunity to try a little multilingual creative typography. the coloured panels on the poster side of the leaflet run along the folds so as to play down the shadows cast by the folds when pinned to a wall or noticeboard.