When something bold, colourful, or unusual grabs your attention — like a poster, book cover, or Instagram post — it’s usually the visuals that make you stop and take notice. But what happens next? You take a closer look, curious if there’s more behind the design than just flashy packaging or a pretty image. If the design carries a deeper meaning, it can spark that ‘aha' moment, creating a connection that feels satisfying. For instance, if you're in a store and a book cover catches your eye, only to discover it’s on one of your favourite topics – well, I certainly don’t mind when my books look good both inside and out.

At Chukster Studio, we work across a wide range of industries, and our tasks depends on the needs of our clients. As designers, we enjoy applying our creativity to a wide variety of projects, each offering new challenges and opportunities to explore different areas of design. Naturally, we love producing visual outputs that are beautiful, exciting, interesting, cool and grab your attention. Yet, as designers who cares deeply about society and what’s happening in the world, there is one thing that tops it all: designing with purpose.

Personally, I have a wide range of interests beyond graphic design — reading, staying informed on news and politics, and exploring societal issues. I enjoy watching films and documentaries to broaden my understanding and I am committed to environmental sustainability and feminism. These passions shape who I am. (And yes, I do also binge-watch Bridgerton and play a lot of Sims 4!) My design work comes alive when I can merge these interests, using my skills to communicate important messages or address social issues.

For me, graphic design is not just about aesthetics; it’s about connecting visuals to meaningful messages. When a design carries meaning, it elevates the creative process. It’s not just about making something visually appealing — it’s about crafting an output that informs, provokes thought, or inspires action. When a design motivates people to change their behaviour or think differently, it takes on a deeper significance. Often, the designs that stand out the most aren’t just visually striking; they have a message or a purpose behind them. These are the ones that stay with us, the ones we talk about and share.

A great example of purpose-driven design is the work of the London agency F&B LDN. Every year, for International Women’s Day, they create a campaign that highlights a significant issue. In 2022, they focused on gender diversity in the workplace with their powerful ‘IMAGINE A WORLD…’ campaign. It was simple but impactful, and it stuck with us.

At Chukster Studio, we also design with purpose whenever we get the chance. That’s one reason we love working with NGOs focused on important causes. Take our work with She for She, an organisation led by Mary Consolata Namagambe, which raises funds to produce and distribute menstrual pads to women in Uganda. We refreshed their visual identity, creating a colourful and engaging profile. We’ve designed promotional materials for their annual Menstruation Walk, a 5km event that supports their mission to provide reusable hygiene products to girls in Uganda and Sierra Leone. In this case, it was important for us to ensure that our designs communicated the message clearly and engaged the public to join the event. We also created infographics for social media to present key facts about menstruation and She for She’s work in a simple and easy to understand way.

Contributing with your design skills once in a while to something meaningful feels incredibly powerful and motivating - especially when you see the impact of the event, with people joining in and supporting the cause.

Another notable project was our collaboration with Bikes4Ukraine, a Danish non-profit that sources used bikes across Europe and delivers them to Ukraine, where they are essential for transporting food and medicine. We worked with founder Colville Andersen to streamline their brand identity, ensuring their communication was bold, clear, and easy to act upon. We developed a striking visual identity with an urban feel, using variable type and pictograms to amplify their message.

Designing with purpose isn’t just limited to projects with clear social or political goals. Even in more subtle cases, there are opportunities to approach design with a critical eye — whether that’s making something eco-friendly, breaking stereotypes, or promoting inclusivity. In every project, there’s a chance to create your own sense of purpose.

For instance, in one of our in-house creative challenges, with the theme ‘type pattern’, I designed a poster highlighting the gender-based pattern that often appears when talking about World Cups. When it comes to the men's World Cup, we usually do not specify that it's the men's, just because we assumed it. However, it's rarely the same with the women's World Cup. Another challenge involved designing packaging for a maté bottle, where I focused on encouraging the recycling of the bottle. These projects may not have started with a purpose in mind, but we were able to bring one into the design.

To wrap up, at Chukster Studio, we believe that purpose-driven design goes beyond aesthetics—it’s what transforms good design into something truly impactful. When a design carries a message and creates that ‘aha’ moment, it has the power to leave a lasting impression.