Hellenic Ministry of Education, Religious Affairs and Sports: A flicker of memory

Greece is one of the very few countries that carries the memory of two distinct genocides within a single generation. The extermination of Christian populations in the Ottoman Empire and the Holocaust of its Jewish citizens. Two chapters. One country.

Before we designed the page, we designed the memory. The visual identity of the programme is anchored by a logo specifically created for the website. A simple candle, universal symbol for memory, devoid of ethnic, religious or cultural references, that gently trembles when approached by the cursor. A responsive mark that feels like it knows you’re close, inviting you to keep the flame alive.

Before any wireframe was drawn, Significa’s design house: Sputnik Design Team conducted a hands-on Brand DNA Workshop with the programme custodians: Mr. Nikos Misolidis, historian, researcher and PhD Candidate at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and Ms. Vasiliki Keramida, Head of Cabinet of the Secretary General of Religious Affairs. The goal was to define the scope, audience and content of the platform, ideate on the presentation of the exhaustive archives of historical evidence, and discuss the platform’s tone of voice, narrative, and aesthetics.

What no one expected was that the workshop would make the collaboration personal. At some point the conversation moved from professional to human. Mr. Misolidis began talking about his own family’s connection to the events. Someone else mentioned a grandparent, who had been in Smyrna during the catastrophe. Then one of the designers shared something about their own family. Then another. By the end of the session, everyone in the room had shared something about themselves.

The main challenge of this project was not technical. It was editorial and emotional. How do you design a platform about genocides that is rigorous enough for historians, easy enough to use for teachers, and compelling enough for a sixteen-year-old who has never thought about the Pontic genocide or the fate of Thessaloniki's Jewish community? The programme originally focused on the Greek genocide narrative, then broadened the scope to cover all 20th-century genocides. The final platform is broader, more universal and stronger for it.

This project came with a sensitive brief and no template to follow. It was exactly the kind of work we feel at home with.

If your work carries weight and your brief is hard to explain, you are probably describing the kind of challenge we love.