I want to aim some of what I am creating at students, as they are particularly susceptible to mental health illnesses, and it can be a lonely struggle, when even you are not sure what is happening to you.
My original idea for this was, that most student flats get tonnes of ephemera posted under their flat doors. Most of it is promotion, but it got me thinking that this is a direct way to reach students, so what if I made the ephemera interactive, so that they might pick it up, play with it and acknowledge it. Even if it was a paper aeroplane that could be tossed about and lauged about. It will still be read and some of it would go on board, and hopefully get people thinking, and perhaps even be of help. (I'm making them sound like small kids, unintentional! But sometimes they are a bit child like with their 'banter'.)
To get my head around how I was going to go about adapting this to a mental health campaign, I had a go at making a fortune teller. It wasn't so hard, it took a bit of thought of where to draw big lines on a flat piece of paper for others to fold. I made some tests which helped a lot.
After doing some more research online to get a better sense of how to create instructions for making one, I discovered this. A mental health campaign that is using a fortune teller! (I genuinely did think of it before I saw this!) But it proved useful for how to go about applying my information to it whilst it was flat.
I later opted to add more colour to make it more interesting and impactful. So it stands out more and is more interesting.
here is how my net is looking at the moment. I had a bit of struggle creating the line work, as most paper and pen combinations smudged badly. The faithful pencil remained sturdy though, and also gave me these lovely textures which I think overall really succeeds at the type of aesthetic I am approaching this whole project with, more friendly and handmade feel, whilst still being a bit bold, and cleanly(ish) organised.
The instructions are at the bottom. I am worried it might all be too small to be legible, I suppose I will have to wait for a test print to be sure. I could scale all of this up to A3, but that is not a convenient hand holdable size, and would defeat the point of this item being a fun and easily distributed item that aims to raise a bit more awareness and get everyone thinking about mental health more.
The folding of it and creation went much better than I expected, wut.
Originally when I proposed this idea, I imagined having drawings in each under flap, however due to its small size, there simply isn't space. I do feel a bit funny about creating something that really only contains very minimal illustrations on it, however the overall thing is very hand crafted by me, and I think that does show through quite successfully, so I suppose the thing as a whole can just be considered as illustration (it is an illustrated product) and it is a piece of design that is communicating, which is basically 'communication through drawing'.
The idea is that it is a fun object to play with and create, and also aims to get people to reconsider depression, to take it more seriously and recognise that it is something that probably already does affect someone they know or perhaps even themselves, as one in four people will at some point in their lives experience it.
The blue footed boobies inside are in keeping with the bird theme that I have gone with and written about already, their aim is to keep this away from being cliche in its summarising and categorisation of depression.
My photo shopping is definitely improving, I'm feeling much more capable making this one. A course mate showed me a much better technique for cleaning up an image, which involves going 'select' and 'colour mode', then deleting the white space. This is much less messy and much faster when successful! Also I am getting the hang of colour control a little more, hence the white numbers on the outside. I think it looks better and a bit more fresh with white text.
I am not very happy with the text that I have written under each flap, but it was hard in such tiny space. So overall I am quite happy with this as a piece of design overall, its a reasonably good concept, and aesthetically I've just about managed to pull it off! Just the content could definitely be improved, so concept strong, content needs more work.
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