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Founded in 1971 by American Dr. Larry Ward, Korea Food for the Hungry International (KFHI) is an NGO committed to satiating both physical and spiritual hunger through the tenants of the Christian faith. While COVID-19 prompted a renewed public interest in charitable donations, it also contributed to the unethical use of content featuring impoverished, pitiful-looking children as marketing touchpoints, a practice now coined “poverty porn.” In response to this trend, KFHI consulted with the bread and butter on an integrated brand renewal to develop a strategic platform that clearly and ethically communicates the brand’s core values.

Despite yielding excellent results, KFHI struggled to convey to the public that its brand concept extends beyond just “fighting child hunger” due to its brand name. Therefore, our new brand concept became “United in Faith and Hope,” better representing the spiritual foundation of KFHI’s work. From this brand concept came KFHI’s three core values: Faith, Empowerment, Recovery. Beyond addressing physical hunger, KFHI uses faith to provide spiritual nourishment, which bolsters community empowerment, in turn contributing to the recovery of both individuals and neighbourhoods. Embodying this virtuous cycle, KFHI’s slogan became “Friends of Hope.”

Inspired by KFHI’s goal of combating child hunger of all forms, we developed a new colour system and two key supergraphics for use by the brand. The first, A Series of Hope, sees a cross representing spiritual love sitting superimposed on a series of circles that represent each of the brand’s core tenants and recall the physical nourishment of bread. The second, Life & Spirit, presents two interlocking curves, representing the intersection between faith, independence and healing in physical and spiritual recovery. Crucially, these supergraphics are used with images of joyful children to to powerfully convey the brand’s driving force of hope

These two supergraphics were designed to be both immediately recognisable and simple enough to integrate into a range of different branding and marketing materials. This is achieved by our designers’ close attention to detail. In “A Series of Hope,” for example, the rounded edges of the cross element subtly embody the soft, accommodating model of faith applied by KFHI. Where the circles intersect, their shades of green become stronger, reinforcing the brand’s focus on community empowerment and the power of ‘coming together.’ This ensures the clear but emotive delivery of the brand’s message across all of its marketing touchpoints.

Before, KFHI’s inconsistent branding contributed to a weak brand image. Now, it has adopted these supergraphics, with their strong, unified visual language, across the board in its visual marketing, from brochures and outdoor ads, to stationary and donation certificates. This allows KFHI to communicate in a powerfully distinct voice on a global level, generating a greater impact and brand recognition without increasing the volume of materials or resources. Its new brand guidelines also allow KFHI to create new materials within this coherent brand image, ensuring its more efficient, impactful and therefore sustainable future operations.

As a certified B Corp, we believe that brand sustainability is both the foundation and ultimate goal of good branding, and a prerequisite of broader social and environmental sustainability, which is why we support NGOs at all stages of the branding process. Though NGOs used to narrowly focus on achieving change through private donations, KFHI’s rebranding evidences how powerfully cohesive branding can allow NGOs to better communicate their beliefs, missions and excellent work. Through this brand renewal, KFHI has improved its brand awareness, reputation and engagement, contributing to increased donations and a significantly magnified impact.

The bread and butter is thrilled to announce that we have been awarded Best Visual Design at the 2023 Kyoto Global Design Awards for our branding work with KFHI. This is our first time not only winning this much-sought-after award, but also even just entering these prestigious Japanese design awards, which have been internationally recognized for their focus on outstanding design that promotes social and economic development.