Palm oil is in many of the foods we take for granted. It's used in so many products that the ability to produce it sustainably has become a major issue, especially for companies that produce palm oil for local or regional markets. While many international producers have taken strides to protect sensitive ecosystems when planting new palm oil plantations, regional producers—especially in Central and South America—have ignored best practices. In some cases rivers have been polluted, erosion has decimated local areas, and indigenous populations have had their health threatened both by the environmental damage and by corporate violence against them.
Forest Heroes, working with
Climate Advisers, asked Notchcode to design and produce a booklet highlighting these regional producers, featuring a scorecard that ranked them on policy, transparency, and abusive practices. The booklet's audience was policy influencers, journalists, palm oil producers, NGOs, and government officials in Central and South America. Initially, Forest Heroes had envisioned two pieces: one in English and one in Spanish. We created a bilingual version that created more parity between the two languages, with wider columns for Spanish content (since Spanish text tends to run 20-30% longer than English text, on average). Titles and other headlines were color-coded by language and position: English in orange to the left, Spanish in black to the right.
The client had a very aggressive schedule: we needed to produce a finished 36-page plus cover booklet within four weeks. That schedule included concept, sourcing imagery, creating map and data visualizations, layout of bilingual text, and printing. Everyone worked together to make it happen in time for the client's conference in South America at the end of the project.
