reading heroes

In the Spring of 2021 I managed and executed Reading In Motion’s Spring fundraising appeal: Reading Heroes. I wrote, designed, and illustrated all aspects of the campaign, which was comprised of print mailings, email marketing, and social media posts. Collaborating with the Director of Development on fundraising strategies, my goal for this campaign was to engage and captivate donors with a story of how young students learn to read. I called upon the imagery of comic books and super heroes, utilizing familiar narratives of trials and triumphs to show stakeholders what students can encounter on their literacy journeys, and inviting them to join these journeys as allies. This campaign was successful in exceeding its goal of raising $15,000 for the organization’s youth literacy program.

Theme & Design

Both the copy and design elements of this campaign were inspired by a type of storytelling popular and familiar to readers young and old: graphic novels. My goal in this campaign was to guide stakeholders through the journeys students go through to reach grade-level literacy, complete with the obstacles, allies, and resources that make up this critical learning period. From technical difficulties and distractions personified as villains, to literacy-inspired superpowers, the origin stories of student readers unfolded over six mass-emails, three months of social posts, and two printed mailers.

Most notably, at the core of the campaign were three students-turned-heroes: Henderson, McKinley, and Sterling. Each named after a landmark in a city in Reading In Motion’s footprint (Chicago, Las Vegas, and Detroit), these characters were designed based on actual Reading In Motion students. Throughout the narrative of the campaign they grew as readers to become the Reading Heroes: Sparks the Phonics Hero, Millennium the Vocabulary Hero, and Supersonic the Fluency Hero.

Reading Heroes: Origins Email Marketing Campaign

Below are two of the six core emails sent to Reading In Motion donors in Spring 2021. Mimicking the style of comic books, each of these emails acted as its own volume in the narrative of the Reading Heroes’ origins.

Printed Materials

The Reading Heroes campaign included two printed mailers: an appeal letter and a postcard, which were sent at the beginning and ending of the campaign, respectively.