By Chloe
I’ve been lucky enough to meet some impressive humans in my life, but founder of youth entrepreneurship program Future Anything Nicole Dyson is right up there towards the very top of the list.
Anyone who dedicates their life to teaching is a legend in my book, but Nic’s multi award winning efforts to drag Australia’s curriculum into the 21st century are next level.
Which is why, in addition to mentoring at a few local schools each year, in 2021 I wanted to show my support for this awesome program by giving away a complete branding, design and marketing package to the Grand Final winner.
Having no idea who I’d be working with from the hundreds of teams made the night even more exciting, but if it’s possible for someone to be even cooler than Nicole, the eventual winner somehow managed it.
11 year old Chloe Alley was voted as the most promising entrepreneur of the night with her socially conscious pitch and hand crafted ‘Heat Wheats’.
Despite lots of the teams choosing to add an social entrepreneurship angle to their projects, Chloe had clearly been personally moved by the long and brutal droughts across QLD, leading her to donate 100% of profits from everything she could sew to farmers doing it tough.
“After injuring myself while competing in a Touch Football competition, my mum gave me a heat wheat to help relieve the discomfort. Whilst using the heat wheat I thought of how useful it would be if I was able to make my own style of these to help others too.”
A few months and several COVID tests later, Chloe and I finally managed to connect on Zoom and begin work on her new brand.
Young and inexperienced as she may have been, I was immediately blown away by her work ethic and passion to support complete strangers.
Taking this idea to heart, I asked if she would be interested in us recording some of the conversations and work we did together, that way other kids might be able to benefit by watching along. Chloe (and her parents) readily agreed, so with Chloe’s permission, I’ve included some of those assets below.
Feel free to share with a young person who might not believe kids can do these kinds of things!
From little things, big things grow.
From our very first conversation, it was clear that Chloe had a strong vision for how she wanted her work to show up in the world — She just didn’t necessarily have the tools or the confidence to make it happen yet.
“I just want everyone to enjoy the feeling of a heat wheat...
It’s like a warm hug from the sun”
With this in mind, I challenged her to get out a pen and paper and just start drawing some ideas - no matter how rough or random - to help me see what was in her head.
With barely any prompting, Chloe produced this beautiful sketch, which became the foundation of not just her logo, but her entire brand.
Scanning the image into Adobe Illustrator, it felt immediately obvious that wherever possible, Chloe’s brand should be drawn or written by Chloe herself.
So while I mocked up some visual concepts and moved into digital strategy mode, I encouraged Chloe to spend a few hours a week or so working on her signature and picking out some favourite colours we could play with.
Chloe quickly found her own style and began pumping out ideas for me to scan into Illustrator and turn into finished artwork. From a simple logo, we moved onto broader branding and marketing assets for her to use on Instagram and her new ecom website.
Which is why it came as no surprise to me when, after many successful market stalls, she was asked to curate a young creators market by one of Australia’s largest development groups.
Eventually dubbed the Youngpreneur Markets, you’ll find Chloe and all her beautiful creations at Brisbane’s North Harbour this Summer.
Update: Nov 2023
Even cooler, Chloe and I will be judging this year’s Future Anything Grand Final together in November, which is not only a beautiful way for this work to come full circle… It means I’ll finally get to meet this awesome human in person for the first time.
