2025
Activation & Experiences
Design Advocacy and Community
The problem
- Systemic invisibility: Artisan women’s authorship gets lost in supply chains, reducing skilled work to anonymous output—weakening pricing power and public appreciation.
- Narrative gap: Most communications sell motifs, not makers; there’s little storytelling that centers the women, their agency, and their intergenerational knowledge.
- “Craft as voice”: Build a visual narrative system: name, tone, identity, editorial, and social formats: where each asset credits makers and treats the craft as legacy and resistance, not just ornament.
- Platform, not poster: Using story capsules, typography, and photography to create repeatable content that communities can own and extend beyond a single campaign burst.
Why it Works:
- Reframes the buyer’s lens from product to provenance, shifting the value story from motif aesthetics to artisan authorship and rights—an uncommon stance in conventional craft marketing.
- Treats advocacy like brand building: consistent voice, maker‑first credits, and portable templates that can travel across channels and partners for compounding visibility.
KalamNari flips the craft story from motif to maker: a credit‑forward identity and editorial system that lets rural Kalamkari artisans author their own narrative, turning visibility into value over time.
Design moves to mention: Identity/voice: A name that foregrounds “Kalam” (pen/brush tradition) fused with “Nari” (woman), making the makers the identity, force, and the voice.