Volunteer courseVolunteering at Instituto Elevar2023
As a volunteer, I taught branding, Photoshop and Illustrator to young people in vulnerable situations. I learned more than I taught.
- Client
- Instituto Elevar
- Role
- Volunteer instructor — schedule, materials and classes
- Reading
- 1 min
- Disciplines
- Volunteering, Education, Branding, Photoshop
The context
Instituto Elevar is a social and educational initiative that offers free job training and personal development to young people and adults in socially vulnerable situations in Sorocaba, Brazil. Courses range from graphic design to technology, marketing and entrepreneurship, with the goal of preparing participants for the job market.
In 2023, as a volunteer, I taught the Branding, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator classes. I planned the schedule, created all the materials and led the classes.
The challenge
Teaching a tool is easy to start and hard to make stick. Someone who only learns where the button is forgets it the following week. The challenge was to tie the tool to a why: what makes a brand recognizable, and how images help tell that story.
How the classes were designed
Branding
The fundamentals of building and managing a brand: a consistent visual identity, tone of voice and communicating with an audience.
Photoshop
Advanced editing, photo manipulation and more complex visual compositions.
Illustrator
Scalable vector graphics, logos and illustrations, with precision for different applications.
Learning from the students
One exercise asked each student to start from their own hand-drawn sketch and turn it into a digital piece. The results were the best part of the course.
What I took from this project
Explaining branding to people who had never heard the word forces you to drop the jargon. If I couldn’t say in one sentence why a brand decision mattered, it was because I hadn’t really understood it myself. That changed how I present design to this day.
