Initial Ideas:
For my main topic I am thinking about highlighting the difficulties of living with a mental disorder, either depression or anxiety. I want to address these topics because I am a person who lives with anxiety and depression and I want to express what it’s like to feel that way through my poster.
3 Designs I liked from the Cooper Hewitt magazine:
I couldn’t find any posters with my topic but I love these designs. Although they are simple and basic I think the messages are powerful. And then the one on the right, I like the position of the woman on the poster; it catches my eye.
Research/Examples:
Because the Cooper Hewitt magazine didn’t have examples of mental health awareness, I looked up graphic design posters on depression and anxiety online and here are some examples of what I found.
What I know I don’t want to do:
I found a lot of posters using brain images and lots of words just like this:
I know I don’t want to do this type of mental health poster because I want my poster to be more relatable and interesting rather than it just be a clinical information, “get help” poster. I want my poster to draw the attention of the viewer in a way that they will gain a new perspective and awareness of how people suffering through mental disorders such as anxiety or depression live.
The main goal of my poster is to spread awareness in a way that people will actually understand more than just the stereotypical “someone with depression is sad.” I want my poster to be informative in a way that isn’t just statistics; I want people to understand what it is like to live with this kind of disease, coming from a person who lives with it firsthand. I also want people who live with it to relate to my poster so they can feel like they aren’t alone.
Inspirations:
I loved the quote in this piece for a depression poster:
I also saw this poster about depression but thought it made sense for an anxiety poster as well:
After this research and brainstorming, here are the sketches I’ve come up with for both a depression poster or an anxiety poster.
Creating the Poster:
I decided to make my poster about anxiety since I can relate to that more than depression and the point of my poster is to make it relatable. After playing on Illustrator with my sketched design, I drew out a new girl and decided that the words, instead of being in a big cloud behind her, would be in a thought bubble because anxiety is mainly irrational thoughts so I think it represents the reality of it more.
First Practice Draft:
I played a little more and decided to invert the colors and make the background black with the girl and the words being white. After making this I added color to some of them…
Version 2 Drafts:
After critique, I had to make some tweaks like making the circles under the thought bubble no fill and changing the words to “sometimes there’s not a reason” instead of “never.” The favorite versions were the girl outlined in red with the word anxiety also in red, and everything white with just anxiety in red. After making these tweaks I made these final two versions…
Version 3 Final Drafts:
With these versions I lightened the red on both to make it less harsh. Finally I decided I liked the girl being outlined in red so the thought bubble would stand out more…
Final Poster:
