Graphic Design Project 03:
A nonprofit organization (of your choice or creation)—in conjunction with The Ad Council—has hired you to develop a three-piece print campaign. They have hired you because of your ability to create compelling pieces of visual communication—pieces that communicate the concept clearly, but also influence the audience to reconsider and understand more deeply the topic at hand. What’s more, your pieces motivate your audience to act. Your topic and position are likely not new, yet the issue still persists. Why? Who isn’t paying attention, but should be? What behavior needs to change? What beliefs or attitudes are holding them back from performing the action you will invite them to perform?
The issue that I chose to pursue in this project is drunk driving. I am wanting to reach a very broad audience with this project. It doesn’t matter the age, gender, or race. The purpose of this PSA, related to drunk driving, is to inform people of the dangers and the stupidity of drunk driving. It seems to me that drinking is not limited to any specific age, even though the legal age limit is 21. People make their own choices, and that is often what leads to other people getting killed.
Much like my two previous projects, I did some extra visual research. I gathered multiple examples of other public service announcements (both directly related and unrelated to my topic). While combing through the many, many examples I came across, I realized that a lot of this Public Service Announcements are simply, but effectively designed. One of my favorites is the second example on the first page. (The garbage bags representing trashed lungs from smoking).
I will admit that my creativity with this final project was running a bit low, making it harder for me to come up with designs/sketches. The visual research is always the easiest, since all you're doing is finding good images to go along with what you are working on. My original written brainstorm actually ended up changing from alcoholism to drunk driving. Naturally, this happened as I was half-way through with my original concepts. Same subject, different topic.
My sketching this time around was a little dry, as I only ended up with four sketches. The four concepts of the sketches:
- Alcohol bottle representing a gap between people and their loved ones
- A silhouette of an alcohol bottle representing the light coming through at the end of a tunnel
- A car (much like a model ship inside a bottle) inside an empty alcohol bottle, representing danger and delicacy
- The texts were supposed to between a sober individual and a drunk individual (possibly having a designated driver, or someone to check in on the individual)
The visual asset board - my favorite! This one was a little bit more difficult to complete because it was slightly challenging to find relevant images to drunk driving. Sure, there are crashed cars, alcohol, and some other public service announcement examples, but I didn't feel like it still fit what I was going for.
FINAL COMPOSITIONS
My favorite posters are the first and third, as I feel like they are the most well done. I like color schemes and moods.
This project just puts an emphasis on things that are real, and everyone designed their PSA's in a way that would stand out to other people. I almost wonder if I should have designed my posters to be a little more graphic to convey the seriousness of drunk driving. I added short facts, but I don’t really know if that would be enough to really deter people from drinking and driving. Had this been a real, and more serious situation, I would have preferred to add more links related to statistics. Possibly even a real life story related to somebody dying due to a drunk driver.
