Let's stop
Newcastle Disease

Newcastle Disease is a highly infectious,  highly fatal virus that can quickly rip through livestock. ND ends many farmers' livelihoods and can put families in poverty overnight.

Iterate. Iterate. 
Iterate.

Oxford Policy Management approached me to help create a handout leaflet for a project that they are running in Tanzania to promote vaccinations of chickens against Newcastle Disease.

The aim of the project is to reduce the rates of infection among chickens. Protecting chickens against ND is simple to achieve through an inexpensive eye drop applied every few months.

Locally there is much skepticism around the vaccine and as the cost comes out of the farmer's pocket it soon became clear that there were many obstacles around how the information could be provided. 

Some of these obstacles included:

• Chickens are let loose amongst villages so protection needed to be understood on a community level.
• Literacy rates amongst farmers aren't high.
• Along with vaccine information, preventative measures were important to get across in a clear and convincing way.

The leaflet was being printed in Tanzania and distributed locally so it was decided to keep the leaflet as a simple A4 handout sheet that could be laminated. Swahili has a long character count per letter so this limited the amount of information that could be included on the leaflet.

It was extremely important to keep vaccine information and disease control information on separate sides of the leaflet to ensure that farmers didn't confuse the two and associate the vaccine with dead chickens.

And Finally in Swahili

As the gif above shows the leaflet underwent many iterations to ensure that the information being provided to farmers was understood in the way intended. With colleagues on the ground in Tanzania, we were able to run field tests and create quick edits to fine-tune the leaflet. 

I approached an illustrator friend to provide clear illustrations to show signs of disease that farmers should look out for among their livestock. Field tests showed that some of these illustrations weren't obvious enough. In these instances, photography was introduced to make information clear.

Though the leaflet has been well received this is an ongoing project and I am expecting many more iterations. I loved working on this project, it's graphic design at its best. Providing important information in a clear and concise way.

We reached out to Philip to design a leaflet for a poultry vaccine impact study in Tanzania targeted at rural poultry-keeping farmers with low to no literacy. It was always going to be a challenge to keep the leaflet informative yet basic. From the first meeting I had with Philip, he seemed very interested in supporting us with the development of this leaflet. What stood out for us was that Philip promptly came back to us with a draft plan and a set of great ideas to start with demonstrating that he knew just what we were after. From there, we worked with Philip for about 3-4 weeks to further develop and finalise the leaflet.

I found the entire process to be a very enjoyable exercise in collaboration. Philip was very patient with us, acknowledging that the leaflet was going through several reviews, including feedback from field visits in Tanzania. He made it comfortable for us to request for minor changes here and there on countless occasions. We appreciated this. The final piece was very well received by farmers in our study contexts. Another point worth noting is that Philip had pointed out that he usually hires someone else to make illustrations – something that we needed. We also found it really useful that Philip was willing to manage the illustrator directly and have us work with him alone. This simplified our role in the collaboration. I look forward to my next opportunity to work with Philip.

Madhav Vaidyanathan

CONSULTANT, OXFORD POLICY MANAGEMENT

Client:

OXFORD POLICY MANAGEMENT

Year:

2021

Designer:

PHILIP APPLETON

© PhilDoesDesign2021