Find the Love, End the Conflict

A lovely set of heartfelt, animated monologues. The simplicity of the images worked well with the content, although some of them could use some more drafting to make the childlike style look more deliberate. It is difficult to make 'children's style' drawing look authentic, and yet also visually engaging. A different choice of typeface here (something hand drawn, perhaps) would have made the visual style of the whole piece more unified – this typeface (it looks like Impact?) has a very computer-generated feel that clashes with the drawing style. The idea of hiding a word in the image that the viewer can click on to find a happy resolution is good, however it could have been visually more interesting (again, using a hand generated typeface, or hiding the word in a more interesting way than just placing it on top of the image). The use of real voices made these stories all the more engaging.

Ahmed, Shima and Olga's hidden words "tolerance", "share" and "care" make sense, I understand how those are the mental states necessary to resolve the conflict, but I am confused about Shima's hidden word ... who must "compromise"? Should her mother have compromised and not written the article? Or should she compromise and accept that her mother is in prison? This confusion weakens the project – I would strongly suggest rethinking this word.

Overall, a strong submission and a lovely idea in response to the brief. Well done.

Picasso once said that the most difficult thing to do is to learn how to paint like a child. As we grow older we are always told what to do and not to do. Conflict starts when the first time someone understands the meaning of the the word "No" and the dialog continues in form of "why", "why not" ... perhaps it is so because we all are looking for answers that makes sense and not necessarily permissions.

I can go with the notion of your teams statement that "If all the people believe in love and try to find it even in the most complicated situations, everything can be solved." That may work to a certain degree if you are fortunate to be like minded - that is not always the case and too many people may want a share of what you may love. Conflict shows it ugly face through the economics of supply and demand and then reality bites.

Your website is interactive but could give us a lot more information if one wants to explore at their discretion - because of your choice of medium. The stories are touching and personal which makes them work. They are concise and given equal weight but could be far more effective if they were voices of children of 10 or 12 years old and not adults. Also the vocabulary use could have some variation based on the regions. Have to work on your sound quality; echos, clicks are distractions takes away from a very engaging entry. I can see this project expand and have a active web presence.

Well well well - We fell in love with this work the first time we looked at it. Very simple and touching stories. and we would have loved to see & hear 96 more of these kind of stories…
We specially like - even though this might have been not on purpose. That the sound recording is not very professional. The side noises give the whole thing some further "authentic" feeling, as if recorded tapes had been send to you for this project. the 4 stories entangle political and private issues on a level of children perspective, which gives the whole some kind of universal gesture. we all want to see these problems solved - on the private and on the political, global level.

The weird thing is that your slogan "find the love / end the conflict" nearly sounds cynical to us. It's obvious that "finding love" does not solve all of the touched/mentioned conflicts. We are not at all nice people who just lost their love. We are in permanent conflict of differing interests - and conflict is not necessarily something negative at all. Conflicts need negotiation and sometimes struggle to be "solved".
But to negotiate a conflict one has to first see and recognize the other (side). This is where we see the strength of your project: in its simplified, reduced language it calls for sensitivity and awareness in conflicts. We are not sure if it was the right decision to force the main part (the 4 stories) into the bracket of this competition wordings (love, conflict and imagination). "find the love / end the conflict" sounds like an instruction which leaves the audience with more questions behind than it would show a direction. so - we like the stories as they open up larger issues than one personal story of a child. We dislike the slogan, the logo and all the other stuff we can click on the website. we believe the work would become stronger if you would have many more stories.
Imagine a website which you enter and directly see 100 kids just as you did show ahmed, shima, olga and noura … then just the statements from them. That's it. Leave the "solution" to the audience, let the audience make up their own mind what is to be done!

The transnational, transcultural and transreligious aspect of your work and your team, is stronger than the slogan at the end of the 4 statements - itself it's a strong(er) call for "love" to end "conflict"…