I recently worked with the awesome people at DOR on an article from their fall issue, #25. The text was about NEETS in Romania, more exactly about the 15-24 population segment who is not involved neither in education, employment nor training.

The series consists of three illustrations, and the main challenge was figuring out a metaphor that could be applied on all of them, for consistency, while being versatile enough for me to be able to transmit different things through it.

After reading the article about thirteen times, settling on a concept, working on that for two days, then dropping it, i finally chose light as a metaphor for society. So in the first illustration, we see two active members of society, people with jobs, or who go to school and have an active role in society, and an outcast, a person sitting in darkness, the NEET.

The second image shows society in its search for NEETS – they’re very hard to identify, not being enrolled in any kind of database.

Finally, the third illustration shows a NEET reentering society, whether it’s by getting a job, enrolling back to school, or participating in a training program.