2020 was a lot to take in. So much happened in the year that for a large amount of people, surviving it was enough. A pandemic, the deaths of multiple great individuals, multiple protests, even a World War III scare.

I designed this in to have a visual summary of the year and from the feedback and hundreds of comments and thousands of engagements on social media, it was clear that thousands of people connected to this design and could relate to the emotional roller-coaster depicted in it.

One of the things that drove this design was something Chris Do said, "If you are designing a poster, always leave something for the viewer to discover on their second and third view" (paraphrased).

I did a lot of eye opening research just to have as much information and reminders of the major events that happened in the year, especially from a Nigerian perspective and I took  notes:

These notes were important because not only did I plan to summarise the year, but I also wanted the emotional factor. 

I had one thing going for me; chaos. On a regular design, these many elements could potentially be problematic but since the theme was to describe 2020, chaos was a necessary vibe to induce that rollercoaster emotion.

That didn't solve all the problematic issues, though. I still had to face the regular issues of balancing so many elements and helping the eye navigate the design. To help do this, I made multiple decisions:

- I had an "anchor", which holds the design together. The element serving this purpose was the man in the mask.

- Contrast helps the eye not feel too overwhelmed with the design so I decided to make the departed have a black and white colour.

- Following the contrast route, I also made sure I used opacity to simulate multiple layers. Some elements are more faded to the background than others and this makes the design easier to scan through and look at.

- Sometimes, good old text just helps. I mean, not everything has to be an image.

- With balance, I also did my best to make sure that for the elements in the left, there were corresponding elements on the right to balance out the visual weight, and vice versa. 

Making multiple decisions like these in the design made me take advantage of the chaos and disorder factor, while still making the design something you can look out without feeling the urge to tear your eyes out.

This was my highest engaged post ever. Even after being reluctant to post it, I hundreds of comments across my different social media that the poster resonated with them emotionally. This doesn't include the amount of screenshots sent to me of people who had reposted it on their own social media.

This was how I knew I had succeeded. I successfully created a design that connected with my viewers emotionally.