In the summer of 2010 the folks at GOOD magazine partnered up with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on a collaborative campaign to bring attention to individuals and organizations working to bring about positive change in education, and global health & development. Kiss Me I’m Polish was brought on board to assist with the effort by designing a multi-faceted series of information graphics on topics ranging from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGS), the U.S. Education system, and Polio, to name a few. The resulting diagrams were published on both the GOOD and Gates websites over the course of the year.

Our approach in illustrating such a vast array of content in a cohesive yet distinctive way was to explore a common visual thread for all diagrams within each set, while in turn, differentiating the individual sets from one another. For example, our inspiration for the Education series – which showcased key findings of the 2010 Scholastic survey of American teachers – came from classroom materials provided by a New York City middle school teacher (and resulted in some of the most visually playful diagrams we’ve had a chance to work on) whereas the set focusing on Polio was inspired by antique medical advertisements and vintage packaging.

As an added bonus, while working on this series, we were asked to create a special suite of animations for a keynote presentation Bill and Melinda were giving in London for the launch of Living Proof – a campaign that showcases real stories about how some of the world’s poorest people are transforming their communities and countries to achieve real progress. The Gates’ touched upon several issues during their presentation, including agriculture, immunization, and corruption, and used our animations to illustrate how Foreign Aid is helping to break the cycle of poverty.

• Art Direction + Design
• Information Graphics
• Illustration