Posters: planning

 In my last blog post, I have presented some research I did on posters from the Samaritans campaign on mental health awareness. 

For my poster designs, I decided to do something connected to those posters, because I found out that I really saw the handwritten notes as powerful. Other things that I thought were very important in my poster design was that it is targeted at the parents, it is in black and white (and grays) and some of them have my main character incorporated. 

I thought about the title of my animation to place it somewhere on the poster and I had a few ideas, but I decided to really think it all through and think about what I want my animation to be. I want it to raise awareness and be a conversation opener. I want people to ask each other questions and be more aware of each other's feelings. I want people to be able to understand that everyone is going through things, even if they don't show that they do. I want people to be able to talk about it with each other. Because of that being my main goal, I think generally the title 'Let's Talk' would fit the idea behind it perfectly. Especially in those difficult times when people became more antisocial than ever. 

I decided to sketch out the ideas for my posters on my iPad. These are just rough sketches, but I do think they are successful. 

This first poster would be the character from my animation holding out a piece of paper saying 'Mom, talk to me please'. The character is colorful in my animation but I would make it all black and white on my poster. The background would be black to not only highlight the main theme but also to add seriousness to my posters. I think posters with black backgrounds are a lot more serious and stand out more too. 

The next poster is not presenting the full character but is showing someone (the character) writing a message on a piece of paper. The message says 'Dad, Please help me'. This should be representing the silent calling for help people with mental health problems are doing all the time. But here it is not silent, it is actually written down. I also want the poster to be black and white and the hand writing will be a little bit more organized on the actual poster, unlike on this sketch. 

This next one is a poster I have changed already. My first idea was to make the character do graffiti with the text 'listen to your child', but when I thought about it, I did not quite like it. I wanted handwriting, not graffiti. I also did not imagine the character to even have the ability to do graffiti, so the idea did not sit quite well with me. I decided to switch the spray paint to chalk and make the text as if it was written with chalk. I like this a lot more. 

The last poster is like a conclusion to the entire set of posters. It is more clear what is the theme of the campaign, because the text is 'Dear Parents please don't ignore my mental health'. I want this text to be appearing in the light of the flashlight. I want to create contrast between the darkness and the light and the flashlight should symbolize the help the person needs. The darkness would stand for ignorance and neglect. 

I think those sketches are very successful and I am really happy with the designs I have created. I love the symbolism of them and that I have also incorporated light and darkness. I think they all are connected and that is important in designing a campaign. I am happy with what I did.