Designing for Impact: How Piktochart Empowers a Social Enterprise for Success

“I was looking for work at the time and I needed to promote things as a graphic, without actually having any graphic design skills,” recalls Kerry Tottingham, the current Strategic Lead and Co-Director at A Brilliant Thing. 

In 2012, Kerry faced a common challenge for many professionals in the social enterprise space: how to create visually compelling content that would help her stand out in the job market without specialized design expertise.

At that time, user-friendly design tools were scarce, leaving non-designers with limited options for creating professional visual content. Kerry discovered Piktochart and immediately put it to work creating a visual CV that she shared on LinkedIn.

This initial success led to expanded usage over a decade in her professional career. “When I’ve worked in various organizations, I’ve used Piktochart to write our evaluation reports and share them because of the infographic.” 

Fast forward to today, when Kerry started working with A Brilliant Thing, she naturally implemented Piktochart as their primary design tool for creating social media graphics, designing reports, maintaining brand consistency, and developing marketing materials.

A Brilliant Thing is a social enterprise that provides vital coaching and consultancy, specializing in healing-centered design for charities and public sector teams. Specifically, Kerry has found remarkable success using Piktochart to enhance the organization’s brand presence through consistent visual messaging, and even developed a physical product that generates revenue.

A Brilliant Thing needed to connect with two distinct audiences: individual freelancers/founders and larger organizations. Their credibility rested not just on their expertise in trauma-informed practices but also on presenting themselves professionally.

Without accessible design tools, the alternatives were either producing basic, less engaging materials or hiring professional designers, which is a prohibitive expense for a small social enterprise. 

They also struggled with creating visual elements that would integrate seamlessly with their Squarespace website while maintaining a cohesive identity, all while needing solutions that would enable efficient creation of professional materials without excessive time investment.

Kerry’s positive experience using Piktochart early in her career inspired her to introduce it to the team at A Brilliant Thing. The team started incorporating Piktochart into their regular workflow, creating templates aligned with their brand guidelines to ensure consistency across all materials.

“We use Piktochart once a week,” Kerry notes. “All of the stuff that we share on social media that is like a graphic of any kind; that’s all created through Piktochart.”

With Piktochart, they found an intuitive, professional, and efficient solution that enabled them to create professional-looking graphics without specialized design expertise and maintain brand consistency across all communication channels. 

On top of that, they could efficiently produce social media content and reports, and seamlessly integrate visual elements with their website created on Squarespace. 

Adopting Piktochart brought tangible benefits to A Brilliant Thing, transforming their visual communication from a hurdle into a strength.

By creating and storing templates in Piktochart’s ecosystem, A Brilliant Thing has significantly streamlined their design process. When they need new graphics, they can simply duplicate and modify existing templates rather than starting from scratch.

“It has made it easier for our work to be shared,” Kerry explains. “Having something that’s designed and branded rather than just like a PDF or a Word document or something, it’s made things quicker, but also more interesting.”

Their branded, visually appealing content helps them maintain a professional image and consistent brand identity. The platform’s versatility has also allowed them to create visual elements that integrate seamlessly with their Squarespace website.

Perhaps the most impressive outcome is how Piktochart evolved from a simple design tool to a catalyst for product development and revenue generation. The team created “The Brilliant Box,” a physical product consisting of coaching cards designed entirely using Piktochart. The box includes original image cards on one side and development activities for groups on the reverse.

“We didn’t pay for any design work on The Brilliant Box because we used Piktochart to do it ourselves,” Kerry shares. “I guess that was the most cost-effective product because we sell it. It’s got a good margin on it, and it didn’t actually cost us. It’s only cost us the production fees.”

The Brilliant Box is used in their workshops and training sessions and is sold to customers twice a year through online sales and at events. Kerry notes that having this physical product alongside their services has been beneficial for lead generation and promotional activities, such as prize draws for people who join their service waiting lists.

This success story highlights the potential for small organizations and social enterprises to leverage accessible design tools like Piktochart not just for communication, but to directly support business growth and revenue generation.

After ten years of using Piktochart, Kerry has also developed valuable insights for effective visual communication from her vast experience.

For A Brilliant Thing, this means using design elements that convey their core values: warmth, friendliness, energy, and creativity – telling a visual story across all outputs.

Maintaining consistency in fonts, colors, and visual elements has also helped Kerry and her team to establish a recognizable brand identity that resonates with their audiences.. “I think getting your visual identity right is really important,” Kerry emphasizes.

When comparing Piktochart to alternatives like Canva, Kerry is clear about her preference: “We have sort of thought, should we move to Canva? But I feel like with Piktochart, the business elements are better. The templates are better on Piktochart.”

She describes Piktochart to others as “It’s like Canva, but a bit more professional. The infographic element is the selling point that I would share.”

As A Brilliant Thing continues to grow and evolve, Piktochart remains a key component of their toolkit. From creating everyday social media graphics to developing revenue-generating products, the platform has empowered this social enterprise to maintain a professional, consistent brand identity without specialized design expertise.

Kerry and her team continue to find new ways to leverage Piktochart for their visual communication needs. Their journey demonstrates how the right tools can become integral to a social enterprise’s success story—enabling them to tell their story and share their mission with warmth, creativity, and professionalism while maximizing their resources and impact.

For other social enterprises facing similar challenges, A Brilliant Thing’s experience offers an inspiring example of how accessible design tools can support not just better communication, but tangible business growth and innovation.