Think Food Bank is a campaign created to help remind shoppers of food banks at the time when it can make a difference. This project was created by Holly, a strategist and copywriter, and Maisie, a designer, both passionate about the ways design can create meaningful change to issues we care about.

The past year, more than any other, has really shown that sometimes you have to think beyond your own circumstances. Food banks right now are under enormous strain, in the UK more than 14 million people are living in poverty, with the pandemic causing a 110% increase in food bank usage at the end of last year.

We got chatting and identified that the problem isn’t due to a lack of people wanting to donate to food banks, but the lack of reminders to donate before the checkout, by which point it’s too late. We aimed to create simple reminders that could signpost food banks at various key points throughout the consumer journey.

The solution was Think Food Bank. A campaign that centres around stickers which mark key food items that food banks need, to remind shoppers to pop some extra food into their trolley before checkout. Supermarkets sell more, food banks get more – it’s a win win!

We wanted to create a initiative that stood out from the usual visual language of Food Banks, making the campaign vibrant and engaging, with playful messaging to make people smile and hopefully stick in people’s minds. After the year that everyone has had, we really didn’t want to come across as lecturing or preachy so the tone of voice was crucial to our campaign. We then created several versions of the stickers, colour coded to match a number of the major UK supermarkets’ colour schemes, making the stickers fit in on shelf, trolleys and other points around the store, giving extra authority to their message.

To date, over 1000 stickers have been sent out to our amazing supporters across the UK who are stickering their local supermarkets and helping us spread the message. We’d love to keep sending more out and eventually look at creating trolley tokens and tote bags, as well as getting permanent signage solutions in supermarkets.

If you’re in the UK we’d love you to join our cause. You can do this by messaging us on Twitter or on Instagram (@ThinkFoodBank) for your own set of stickers. We have a crowdfunding account to help cover the costs of printing, packaging and postage, however there’s no obligation to donate. Let’s stick together to help end food poverty for good.