PSA Campaign:
Cyberbullying
Brief:
For this project in ART 235, a series of 3 posters were to be made for a PSA campaign tackling a topic of choice. I chose cyberbullying for my topic as it is a very serious issue plaguing many kids and teens all over the world. Ever since the internet became a place for anonymous users to chat with each other, bullying has adapted to this as well. Now more than ever, rude comments and even death threats can be sent to anyone at any time as an anonymous user. Many young kids and teens abuse this part of the internet to harass and send hate to others. This issue will continue to get worse as time goes on unless people can know that they are still talking to a person online, even if they can't see them or their reactions.
Brainstorms:
Mindmaps are always helpful for mapping out basic ideas for a project. I went with more technology-based imagery than metaphorical, but it was still nice to have all these ideas laid out for reference.
Planned to use Adobe Photoshop for this project, so sketched out a lot of literal imagery of people, faces, doors, phones, chains, and other symbols. Originally planned to use people in environments for my project, but since the message was about cyberbullying, I decided to go with something more text-based and simple like the designs you see below.
Progressing Designs:
First version of the texting posters. Originally had it in a similar style to an actual texting app, but just changed up some colors. Ultimately, I was recommended to scale the whole thing up and just have a few messages instead of several, as the poster looked a bit busy with all the text.
After simplifying things down, I came down to these 3 versions: one similar to the messaging app but bigger, one with more vague implications of a texting app, and the last one, a very simplified version with a dark background and single, bold hate message. I decided to work with the last version as it seemed very simple, yet striking in its messaging and hierarchy.
Changed up a few things from the poster I went with. Made the "STOP cyberbullying" title bolder and gave it a klint font, centered the text bubble, moved tag closer to the bubble, rose the website link and logo up a bit, and fixed up some grammar for the tagline.
Final Posters:
All done in Adobe Illustrator. Used Klint and Trade Gothic Next LT Pro fonts. Ultimately, very happy I could design something for an issue I'm passionate about and truly think needs to stop. I like how the message is communicated here like a literal hate message on a phone and the design is very bold and stands out.
