Vis Comm: Layout Research

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Vis Comm: In class Drawing

For 1-2 minute quick sketches, I used iPad and Apple pencil in Photoshop. Chose Acrylic Round Brush and Acrylic Paint for the lines.

For 5-10 minutes sketches, we had more time focusing on the details.

For this one above: I tried to capture all the details for the female model’s dressing. Bazinga!

Vis Comm: Empathy and Advocacy

Before starting to construct my ideas, I looked into successful organizations and firms’ logos. It turns out that, throughout time, visual identities has been more graphic and modern edited. So I decided to cohere my logo styles modern and clean.

Mental health affects our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. Its stability contributes to how we think and act, helps us handling stress, and ensures our decisions making. Mental illnesses can be caused by biological factors such as genes, brain chemistry, family history of mental health problems as well as people’s life experience such as trauma or abuse. In the United States, 1% of adults live with schizophrenia, 2.6% live with bipolar disorder, 6.9% live with major depression and 18.1% live with anxiety disorders. Worldwide, 450 million people suffer from mental health conditions but shocking only 40% of them are receiving proper care and therapy.

Traditionally, people hold negative attitudes and prejudice towards people with mental illness. “Crazy”, “Weird”, “Dangerous”, “Weak” are often used to refer them and this results in social rejection and social isolation to the group who needs actual help. And for those who sought for help often felt ashamed to admit their problems due to the stigma and judgment.

To another section of the population, mental illness is only considered as the downside of mood swing cycle which unnecessarily needs any treatment. Anyone who suffers from mental illness is either too weak to hold any stress or incapable to self-adjust from sadness. In this case, schizophrenia is considered untreatable insanity.

Recognizing the cruciality of mental health, reducing of the potentiality of mental illness and improving diagnostical consulting for the mentally ill group are crucial to the social stability. Meanwhile, it is also significant to eliminate the bias for mental illness group by implementing mental health education to the mass population.

My visual designs are inspired from the empathy for mental illness groups and advocate for noticing, embracing and curing. Noticing people around you who suffer from mental disease and providing proper help, embracing the sadness, the flaw by accepting the fact and elimination social bias to prevent isolation and stigma; curing the group by providing treatment advice and education.

Reflection:
I have encountered 3 major decisive points in my process of advocacy for the importance of mental health.
1. Whether should I call my organization ‘MENT’?
When we “usually” say someone is mental, we are indicating that the person is not emotionally or mentally stable. However, MENT is also a suffix that forms nouns expressing the means or results of an action. MENT can mean stability. So I decided to keep the MENT to break the stigma of mental illness.

2. My first design outcomes look a bit Hitlerite, should I change it?
Yes, I should. That was my first instinct. Because the logo represents the brand identity. It should avoid any negative impressions that it may possibly convey. So I change my design into a more fluent line that is constructed by trangles. Triangle also means stability.

3. Whether I should keep the black outline for my 3 sub-icons?
With the black outlines, my graphics look more classic and conspicuous. And it looks modern without the outline. I like them both, and until now, I haven’t decided yet.

Creative Tech: Knit Dress