Project Brief

Your task is to work with a group of designers to create a comprehensive campaign that challenges stereotypes and works towards reducing the stigma associated with mental health issues. Your team must design a series of posters that visually communicate key messages and challenge common mental health stereotypes. Next your team must create graphics optimized for social media platforms to share the campaign online. Finally, your team must design supplementary materials like brochures or pamphlets for distribution in various community settings. Your team must be prepared to present your research and deliverables with an addition of explaining the effectiveness and reasoning behind the choices made for the deliverables.

Deadline: 9 Days

First Steps

I sought out a team that didn’t consist of very many members. That’s when I found Marysol and Geo and asked to join them for this assignment.The first objective our team had was to discuss a community and an associated stereotype. After getting to know each other a little more, we discovered that we each had something in common. Our hispanic ethnicity. The next task was to brainstorm a stereotype that is prevalent in the Latino Community. We discussed how it is very common for Latino’s, especially Latino men, who are constantly told by their parents/family members that it is not okay to cry or talk about their feelings to any one. Doing so, shows a sign of weakness and immaturity, according to many Latinos. We further discussed a specific target audience and made the decision to create a campaign to spread awareness to Latino adults (age 30 and up) that it is okay to discuss feelings of sadness, anger, stress, depression, etc. to others to improve their mental health and spread a positive influence to others to do the same.

We compiled a typed document to jot down our thought process and ideas for the campaign. We started with our target audience and the visual theme that we are striving for. In other words what we want the audience to feel when they are viewing the campaign. We also communicated with one another the message that we wanted to convey to the audience and typed out our ideas.

Our team researched colors and typographic elements that worked for the visuals of our campaign. We kept in mind that these colors had to support our visual theme of being bold but welcoming. We stayed away from colors that could be too threatening such as red. All of us liked the contrast of orange and a softer tone of blue as it was pleasing to the eye and conveyed feelings of enjoyment.

Being mindful of the goal of our theme, we decided on the font Leage Gothic for the header of each of the deliverables and Questrial for the subheaders. DM Sans was also our choice for the bodies of each of the deliverables.

Another example of bottling up a multitude of emotions and not having the courage to speak about them to anyone. The many images inside the head on the left individual are examples of things that can cause one to suffer mentally. Often enough, a friend or family member can tell something is wrong and may initiate help by asking what is wrong. This is one of many keys to opening up about your feelings and entering a path of eliminating possible mental health concerns. The main takeaway of this poster is to allow others to help you if you are struggling with major and minor things in life.

This is one of Marysol’s social media advertisements. Although I can’t share her thought process behind its creation I can share what I admire about it and one critique I have. I do like that she incorporates the emoji illustrations I designed to keep with a consistent feel for the rest of the campaign/brand. I also like the eye-catching colors of the image, which would stand out against the white or black (night mode) background of the Instagram interface. One critique I have is with the typography on the right side of the image getting lost in the image. I find that Instagram users quickly look at an advertisement before scrolling on to the next post, therefore the text should be large enough to be spotted and read in an instant and not something that has to be looked at long enough before realizing that its there.

I feel this is definitely an overall stronger contender for Marysol’s social media advertisement. The Spanish text definitely speaks more towards the latino adult population that we are trying to target. The image sends a message to the audience to be transparent about their problems so that their kids and other family members can follow by example. The ad also incorporates my emoji designs which establishes consistency with the other campaign materials. One critique I have is that the yellow text gets lost in the image and is too small. Using a different color, size and layout can make for a more cohesive look.

Marysol went above and beyond and designed a fourth social media ad mockup. I like how it’s very informative and incorporates facts, yet I feel it better works as a poster rather than a social media advertisement.

Another one of Marysol’s social media drafts. I enjoy the message it conveys and the feelings of happiness that it creates. I do, however, feel that it does not best represent the campaign which encourages adults to open up to one another about undisclosed issues and stressors and instead simply encourages the viewer to spend more time with loved ones. Also, the white typography gets lost in the image, especially the one in the bottom left hand corner.

This is Marysol’s actual choice for her social media ad and I think she made a good decision doing so.

These images are to be viewed from left to right, starting at the top.

I find that this closely represents an advertisement that you would actually see on Instagram and it also applies the same “swipe for more” feature.

It’s easy to read, incorporates a blend of bright and inviting colors, and executes the theme of our campaign.

Here we have Geo’s brochure mockup. Some things that I like are that it incorporates my emoji designs in to the brochure to achieve consistency and uses the colors and typographic elements that we all agreed on. I think he has a strong layout overall and is very playful in its visual construction. I also love that he incorporated a side in English and a side in Spanish.

My critique is that the text in the left column is too small and hardly ineligible. The text in the middle column could use a white or orange outline to make its darker blue color pop up against the lighter blue background. Although I like this brochure, I also wish Geo could have made more than one mockup to create another option to choose from.

And at long last we have the final campaign fully assembled. These are all slides from a power point presentation in which we all discussed its contents to our peers and answered questions. It was very well received and a project/campaign I feel very proud to have helped design.

One of our tasks is to share our campaign on social media and design its graphics. Each of us contributed three messages that could be displayed on Instagram. The messages I came up with are displayed in orange text, which I would later borrow for rough drafts of the poster design.

We assigned ourselves specific tasks to contribute to the final campaign. Being a strong illustrator, I volunteered to handle the campaign posters, while Geo agreed to design the pamphlet and Marysol handled the social media advertisements for Instagram.

I recreate these sketches in Illustrator to get a better feel for each one. This is one of my vector drafts for the campaign poster. Holding in a lot of emotions and not having the courage to tell anyone about life’s problems, due to fear of being judged, can feel like drowning. Making the decision to talk to a friend or family member about personal issues can feel as though you are pouring out all the water that caused you to drown, thus being emptied of stress.

I went with a different approach for this poster. I wanted to come up with something that can act as an interactive experience. Through research I discovered that advertisements and posters that cause interaction and reflection tend to stick better. To tie it into this campaign, I designed it to be eye catching through its bright and vibrant colors (also matching our theme) and back up a very simple question with fun visuals to represent the viewer’s possible answer. The text at the bottom of the poster demands a command. This encourages the viewer to share their mood with someone, even if that emotion is positive.

Spoiler alert… this is the poster I end up going with for the campaign.