In 2018, RNIB (the Royal National Institute of Blind people) relaunched with a completely new brand positioning, ‘seeing sight loss differently’, committing to dispelling the misconceptions surrounding living with sight loss.

Most of us rely on our sight every moment of every day. And that makes us more likely to assume that blind and partially sighted (BPS) people aren’t able to do the things we can. This incorrect assumption is hugely damaging, making sighted people less likely to employ or socialise with those experiencing sight loss.

For a charity with limited budget and low engagement from outside the BPS community, we couldn’t rely on traditional formats and channels to drive awareness with the brand and the issue. We needed to activate interest in environments that challenged expectations.

In order to challenge damaging public misconceptions that blind and partially sighted people are helpless, and unable to lead normal lives, we created The See Differently Collection. A range of products which rebranded everyday objects to reflect how they are repurposed by blind and partially sighted people as the simple yet ingenious life hacks they created to maintain their independence.

The suite of products celebrated the sight loss community and were packaged in distinct, highly visible and accessible packaging. Including an afro comb, which helps you safely chop vegetables, and a sock when used with a hoover to help find small items dropped on the floor. The product range turned the concept of design on its head – with the user becoming the designer through ingenuity and need.

To help the public see sight loss differently, we needed to make them realise just how smart, inventive and capable the BPS community are, showing them how they reshape their environment to work for them. We set our sights on the design world, targeting people with an active interest in innovation and ingenuity. That way we could show that contrary to being helpless, BPS people deserve to be considered alongside the world’s greatest innovators.

We worked with BPS people to understand some of the smartest life hacks they use to reshape the world around them, elevating them to role of designers that they naturally are.

Inspired by these life hacks, we rebranded and packaged items to reflect their new uses.

An afro comb becomes a veggie slicer.

A hair clip keeps your shoes in order.

A bar of soap acts as a nail protector.

And a simple sock becomes a small item finder.

By partnering with the The Design museum, we elevated blind and partially sighted people as innovators alongside the heroes of design.

Selling the products in The Design Museum empowered the sight loss community, highlighting and legitimizing their inventiveness, while raising much needed funds for the charity at the same time. Within a month, the products began selling out in store and online, showing that the design community was waking up to the inventiveness of BPS people.

But the impact went beyond those who experienced the products first-hand. The collection was talked about in national press and on national radio, spreading RNIB’s message that with a bit of ingenuity, people with slight loss are more than capable of living normal lives.