Thirrili - Ethical Design Co.

Thirrili is a not-for-profit charity organisation located in Darwin, Northern Territory, which aims to contribute to the broader social well-being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Thirrili partners with key stakeholders to provide crucial supports to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples suffering grief, loss and trauma due to the loss of a loved one through suicide and other critical incidents. Thirrili is uniquely positioned as Australia’s only national Indigenous postvention service.

The brief

EDCo. was initially hired in 2020 to design Thirrili’s 2019-20 Annual Report and editable newsletter template. The report was very well received and it was an absolute pleasure work work with Thirrili to help them create a visual story for their stakeholders. We have since designed the 2020-21 Annual Report and have also assisted with sustainable printing solutions.

For both annual reports our objectives were to:

create a beautiful, striking and professional document to share key achievements and statistics with stakeholders and help attract new donors

combine an illustrative design with Thirrili’s existing bold and colourful branding, while also still appealing to a corporate audience

demonstrate the healing nature of the work Thirrili do with use of beautiful photography and hand-drawn illustrations

visually represent movement towards a new era of organisational leadership in Thirrili.

Creative direction by Sonja Meyer, Design by Shan Thoo

Additional contributions

We noticed very quickly after beginning work with Thirrili that there is a huge underrepresentation of first nations people across stock photo websites. It is difficult to find imagery of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families going about their daily life (outside the more stereotypical cultural imagery that is commonly seen). Ethical Design Co. sourced and donated a beautiful photograph, Happiness on Country (valued at $500), to Thirrili’s 2020-21 annual report project in order to ensure the photography represented the messages in the report and the important work that Thirrili are doing. A special mention to Milly Moments Photography for providing some stunning options for us to choose from and for agreeing to license a photo for the report.

How is this ethical?

Thirrili advocates for a strength-based, community capacity building approach to providing suicide prevention and postvention support services at a local, regional, state/territory and national level.

Thirrili work in conjunction with local Elders, community and Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander organisations to ensure a community response is put in place to support bereaved individuals and families.

One of Thirrili’s organisational pillars is to create systems change by sharing their learnings of emerging good practice, participating in networks, or developing new networks to support postvention responses, and advocating for change to address emerging issues in this space.

Our sustainability strategy

Thirrili’s 2020-21 annual reports were printed on EcoStar 100% recycled uncoated paper stock (we only offer printing on sustainable paper stocks at EDCo.). We also donated a number of trees to our trusted suppliers at Fifteen Trees to offset the project.