The UK Charity Karma Nirvana supports victims and survivors of forced marriages and honour-based abuse. In 2015 they wanted to launch their second social media campaign to build public awareness of the issue in Britain.

The launch of the campaign coincided with the charity's first National Day of Memory for victims of so-called honour killings on 14 July. The date marks the birthday of Shafilea Ahmed, who sadly lost her life in 2003 aged 17 after suffering years of honour-based violence, Shafilea’s parents suffocated her to death with a plastic bag in front of her siblings.

To mark this, Leo Burnett was tasked with creating a social media campaign that would raise awareness of this important cause and I was asked to design the microsite. 

The concept of the campaign was to create a thought provoking and innovative campaign. Letting social media being harnessed in the best ways possible to gain as much publicity for the day as possible, in order to tell the powerful and emotional story about a subject many of us don’t know about. 

The bleak desire behind the perpetrators of an ‘honour’ killing is to wipe the victim’s existence from memory. Victims are seen as a ‘stain’ on the family, bringing dishonour upon their relatives. 

Our aim was to counter this dark intention by using plastic in a positive way to restore Shafilea’s memory and create a memorial in her honour. The idea was to reverse her parents intention to erase her, by restoring Shafelia’s memory using that very same material - plastic. Utilising 3D printing a memorial bust of Shafelia was programmed to print gradually, in response peaks in activity behind the hashtag #RemeberShafile. Supporters were able to witness the progress of the memorial via a feed on the Karma Nirvana website.

It was a privilege to be asked to play a part in the campaign as well learn about the technical challenge of making this site work. Working alongside with a very talented team of motion graphic retouchers and web developers #RememberShafilea gained overwhelmingly positive response in the media with features in a number of major publication and a hugely positive sentiment on social media. However, over all more victims were able to access the help they desperately needed.