This project was created for a college graphic design course focused on creating the concept, brand, and design materials for a social issue campaign from top to bottom. The final product was a printed campaign book and physical merch items.
CONCEPT + Vision
In a perfect world, we’d all have the opportunity to meet people from every background in our own local communities. We’d have the opportunity — and the willingness — to have authentic, judgement-free conversations with people who aren’t like us, and we’d learn from them.
This isn’t the world we live in. We tend to surround ourselves with people like us, and we learn about those unlike us through media. In majority culture, the stories of the marginalized are defined by news media, and news media is telling the stories that their audiences want to hear.
This removes agency from marginalized communities, who often do not have equal access to publishing and promoting their stories through news media or social media. These communities are forced to rely on the good graces of journalists or social media algorithms to get their message out.
These communities are reduced to stereotypes because only specific narratives are picked up by news media and social media.
This campaign seeks to challenge the media representation of marginalized communities in three ways.
three goals of the projcet
Challenging the status quo is at the heart of this campaign. For that reason, it utilizes primarily knockout text. Red is chosen for its boldness and communication of urgency. Silver is specifically for interactive components—such as defining your story on a black sticker with a silver permanent marker. White is the primary text color throughout the campaign, while dark red is used as an accent for section headers and navigation elements.
This is a storytelling campaign, so type is simply a vessel. The Avenir Next family is understated and easy to read in many sizes, while providing eseveral weights to use for establishing information hierarchy.
The campaign logo features a speech bubble—one of the most simple representations of communication. While much of the campaign is focused on writing, the use of the speech bubble is a reminder that this campaign isn’t really about publishing. Publishing is a tool for sharing information with many people, but at the end of the day what’s most important is that stories are shared, which humans have been doing since the beginning of time with speech.
brand
The inform designs are advertisements created for transportation hubs including airports, train stations, subway stations and bus stops.
With a storytelling campaign, notebooks were another obvious merchandise choice. These notebooks are offered with ruled, graph or blank pages.
the reclaim designs are consumer products that allow marginalized communities to declare the true value of their stories.
the engage designs are the UI for an app that would allow anyone to share their stories, read others', and purchase merch.
We believe in storytelling.
We believe that storytelling can build empathy and change policy.
We believe that storytelling is at the heart of creating a better world.
We believe in your story, and we’re excited to tell it.
Mockups created with original photos shot on iPhone 8 and Canon T5i.
Posters and physical products designed in Adobe Illustrator.
In-situ mockups created in Adobe Photoshop.
App design created in Adobe XD.
In-situ mockups created in Adobe Photoshop.
App design created in Adobe XD.