Unhoused Awareness Campaign

The Task:

Here, I was tasked with designing a series of deliverables to raise awareness about a social issue. I opted to spread awareness about California's homeless crisis. I created an icon, a poster, an Instagram carousel, an app icon, and a meme to address all facets of raising awareness in our modern digital age. I find the homeless crisis incredibly heartbreaking, and indicative of a larger systemic issue not only in California, but the entire country. I wanted to create a palpable sense of urgency with this project because of that.

Initial Icon Sketches

When bringing the icon into Illustrator, I tried a couple different variations. Mainly it was a process of trial and error creating trying to best depict a person sitting while slouched.

I had trouble brainstorming what exactly an icon representing homelessness would look like. In addition to representing homelessness, how can I simultaneously represent the issues and circumstances surrounding it? I ultimately leaned into exaggeration. Either making the figure seem invisible, as society often likes to pretend that the unhoused do not exist, or making the outline of a home invisible, to literally represent it. I opted for the latter.

Early Poster Drafts

In the early poster drafts I experimented primarily with scale and the placement of the headline. I also attempted to turn the negative space between the figure's arms and legs into a heart to emphasize the message, but decided it was too unclear.

Font & Color Palette

I decided on the final font and color palette rather early. At the time I was researching Roman Cieslewicz' work and took a lot of inspiration from his favored combination of powerful dark reds and black. I felt the combo inspires a sense of urgency and warning that the project needed. As for the typeface, I chose Futura as it is a geometric, clean, and bold sans-serif; easily recognizable and readable from afar.

Final Icon & Meme

For the final icon I adjusted the dashed outline of the house and scaled up the figure inside of it to better emphasize legibility from any distance.

Part of this project was to create a meme including your icon. I had a lot of fun recreating a post you would normally see on social media, while poking fun at a very real problem that contributes heavily to the homeless crisis in California.

Final poster & Carousel

With the final carousel, I expanded upon the visual system I created for the poster and elaborated on the message. The first slide is essentially the poster converted into a square frame, leading into some eye-opening statistics on the second slide, with the final slide stating a call to action and the heart of the campaign.

For the final poster, I opted to decrease the size of the icon to allow a sense of increased isolation. Surrounded by a sea of homes without people in them, it visually represents the issue while also alluding to the housing crisis that contributes largely to it. I adjusted the headline and included smaller supporting statistics underneath it. From afar, the headline draws the viewer in, and encourages coming closer to read the smaller text.