Impact Beyond Commerce

The new logo

The first winner of the Thoth initiative was the Foundation for Our More Beautiful Life, which operated the Four Treasures Children’s Home across four locations.

The organization had recently undergone changes, and our task was to help them express a renewed identity.

Beyond creating a new visual image and website, the platform also hosted the children’s home’s own publication, Útitárs (Travelling Companion), and provided a forum for communication.

When I visited the home in Lőrinci   — about 60 kilometers from Budapest — to photograph the children and the environment they lived in, I stepped into an orphanage for the first time in my life. The children were openly curious and welcoming. It is an experience I know I will never forget.

At one point, the idea emerged to create a short Flash animation inspired by the eyes of several children and the directress. I still remember those gazes vividly.

Equally unforgettable was a gift we later received: a bottle filled with bath salts, decorated by the children themselves, bearing our company’s logo as a hand-drawn ornament. It was a small object, but it carried immense meaning.

The project received national attention: the winner was announced on Kreativ.hu, and the finished website was featured in Hálóvilág, a supplement of HVG, one of Hungary’s leading independent weekly newspapers, on June 11, 2004.

The website and domain were in operation between 2004 and 2009.

Our first meeting was also followed by a photoshoot, which was used in the design of the website, which presented movement and music therapies and possible problems in a cheerful, playful world of colors and shapes.

The second winner of our competition was the Menő Manók Foundation, which deals with children with special learning disabilities.

(The name of the organization is a wordplay; it could be translated as Walking Elves and Cool Elves at the same time)

Unlike the websites of other similar organizations, it placed great emphasis on providing continuous information to parents and teachers, and also aimed to recruit highly qualified professionals.

The three founding members (Anikó Gergely, Péter Laczkó, Péter Tóth) were waiting for the questions and experiences of the profession and parents, both via e-mail and through the public Forum.

The website was operational from 2004 to 2008.

Our next winner was the Historical Game and Tradition Preservation Society (Történelmi Játék és Hagyományőrző Társaság) of Agárd. In addition to the historical games, the main objective of the society is to save the birthplace of Géza Gárdonyi (1863–1922; one of the most popular Hungarian writers, poets and journalists, honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences) from oblivion, to renovate the house and use it as a museum.

I was happy to travel to Agárd to meet Zsuzsanna Papp;I used to spend a lot of holidays at Lake Velence, when I was a child and I loved the area very much.

The first version of the website was made with Flash technology, with beautiful animations, and this version was in operation from 2005 to 2008, then we switched to a simpler, WordPress-based version due to the continuous expansion of search engines.

The group, supported by the Ministry of National Cultural Heritage, among others, was helped to achieve their goals with a colorful, exciting website and online marketing consultancy.

The Society made me an honorary member of the Association for supporting this noble cause and for his enthusiastic and selfless work.

Although the Society ceased to exist, the Memorial House was born and is still in operation today.

The next winner was the Budapest Méta Communication Education Circle (Méta Kommunikációs Nevelési Kör); was a drama pedagogical group that built a community and offered programs for preventive purposes (e.g. theater performances), also operated in the Bárka Theater, and also processed the world of Budapest at the beginning of the century, with theater pedagogical, educational and communication purposes.

The website in 2006

It was an active, educational drama pedagogical group that helped young people and communities develop through the power of drama, and also played/plays an important role in the culture of Budapest.

The website and the domain operated from 2006 to 2008.

The last, and unfortunately the shortest-lived winner of the Thoth initiative was the Újkert Educational Centre, which was already divided up and its activities were reorganized the following year.

We created a very colourful website with a small Flash animation in the header.

The website was only operational in 2008.

I lived in Malta between 2014 and 2017, where I found the Gaia Foundation and got to know a few team members.

Since the market was on my street every Monday, I bought a dozen of large kitchen filters on a whim, and on June 17, 2017, we held the first beach cleaning day in Ghajn Tuffieha Bay, which was a great day and more than thirty people came. The event got off to a difficult start, because many people did not understand why someone wanted to filter the beach with a pasta strainer, the children joined quickly, and after them the adults also took part.

Ghajn Tuffieha Bay is narrow, and not only is garbage dumped on the shore a constant problem, but the sea current is also constantly depositing its plastic sediment here. We regularly found mineral water caps that sell in Africa, 300 kilometers away.

After the event, we sent out presentations to local companies, drawing their attention to the problem, and we recommended the possibility of beach cleaning organized by the foundation for team-building events.

We have become very good friends with the local members of the group, and since I offered my help, we are planning a new website together.

Gaia Foundation, Malta - 2017

The website was designed to help the team raise more resources by offering their services and become a vibrant hub that promotes healthy living as well as building a stronger, larger community that is involved in their ongoing activities.

Although the design plans reached the management – who spent most of their time in Sicily – there was never any feedback, so the website was never born.

Although my friends no longer work for the foundation, it is a pleasure to see that the beach clean-up actions are still going on to this day, and the restaurant on the beach (Singita Miracle Beach Malta) also organizes similar events with other local teams, and so there is a lot of plastic on the beach.

Big Bear Brunch - 2022

In 2021, I found the Rainforest Run initiative and offered my help to the International Animal Rescue team. This is how the logo was born for the "Big Bear Brunch" fundraising initiative, which supports the organization to save bears in cages in Armenia.

The donations collected will help build a new, larger bear rescue center, as the current one is almost full.

The goal is to rescue all the remaining bears in cages and provide them with a safe, semi-natural environment – and in some cases, to prepare the right bears to release back into the wild