I was given the choice between 3 topics to base my project on; Feminism, Male Suicide and Sexual Harassment. I decided to go with Male Suicide as my chosen topic, I will be creating 3 posters to go with it.
I started by doing some research on the subject.
Suicide is the highest cause of death among men under 45. Due to this, I will be aiming my campaign towards that demographic. There is a higher rate of male suicide to female as men are less likely to ask for help, my posters will try push the men to talk about their feelings and that it is normal to feel the way they do.
There can be many reasons towards the men taking their lives. This could be due to:
Prior suicide attempts
Mental health problems – depression (often revealed through irritability, anger or hostility)
Relationship problems
Social isolation
Exposure to bullying
Substance abuse history
Physical illness or disability
Access to medication or weapons
Recent bereavement (family member or a close friend)
Losing a friend or family member to suicide
There have been many campaigns to try help prevent male suicide, such as CALM, 'Alright Mate?' and Project 84.
I followed on by researching how companies have taken on posters for their campaigns.
After seeing a few examples, it was shown whenever someone is making a poster campaign, they all have the same illustration style, text and message. I will have to make sure I stick to this during my poster designs.
If I don't follow the 'branding' on my posters, no one will notice they are all for the same cause/campaign.
I started sketching up a few ideas in my sketchbook which I can use for my campaign.
I then narrowed it down to my three favourite designs.
As it is a campaign, I needed to keep my colours and style the same throughout every poster design.
I digitalised my designs, as well as making a couple changes.
The butterfly style poster hasn't changed from the sketch, however I made the scissors poster differently, the scissors aren't in the rope, instead there is a line across from the scissors going over the rope. The anchor poster also has slight changes, I made the text towards the top and made a full anchor instead of just the lines.
I decided to go with the colours blue, yellow and orange as they aren't violent colours, they are calming and won't be too in the face towards people looking at the posters. I made the background black so the colours stood out a bit more.
Within my designs, I incorporated the ";" symbol. The symbol is used everywhere as a simple way to tell people to carry on and not give up, it's the suicide awareness logo. I felt that if I added this to my posters, not only will people realise the meaning behind it, but it will also help show the message I want to give.
I'm happy with how the posters turned out, however I think I could of done better if I had to redo this project.
I struggled coming up with the ideas at first, but after getting some inspiration from campaigns, even some tattoos people have, I started getting the ideas and sketched them down.
Considering I'm not the best at drawing, I am happy with the designs I made.
I managed to keep the designs and text the same, I should of made the butterfly blue and purple, but this did not come across my mind until I was done.
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