Mental Illness Campaign
Someone who seems fine on the outside may not be fine at all. Inspired by the answers to the most frequently asked question "How are you?", this series of posters challenges the very meaning of the most stereotypical statement, and console and encourage those who are suffering to seek help through the 24 hotlines.
Viewers afar may interpret the answer as "I'm okay", but taking a closer look reveals its actual meanings. It exhibits that people's sufferings are rather reserved and accumulated to oneself and are hardly exposed to others. Someone who says "I'm okay" may, in fact, be undergoing serious mental breakdown.
Process
Research > Ideation > Evaluation > Execution
The objective of this project was to create a campaign concerning about well-being among university students. Defining the concept and finding students' stress factors have impacted me to focus on mental health issue.
Left: The Most Stressful Factors Among University Students
Research from Jacqueline Britz, Eric Pappas of James Madison University
Right: The Six Most Frequently Experienced Psychological Issues of Adult College Students
Research from Apollo Research Institute
Research
The first question that came to my mind was, what is well-being and which aspect of well-being are the students most affected? Well-being, which is defined as "the state of being healthy and happy (Cambridge Dictionary)", is mainly determined by five different aspects: spiritual, physical, social, mental and emotional well-being, all of which lead towards one's long-term welfare.
Next, findings showed that major stress factors among college students were financial, social and mental problems. However, I was able to infer how different aspects of well-being were interconnected and come together to affect students' mental health. For example, social and academic stress all came to impact students' mental health problem. Therefore, I decided to focus on students' mental health issue.
Ideation
In Hong Kong, although a lot of students suffer from mental illness, there is strong social stigma against mental illness which often hinders them to seek professional help; thus, my main goal was to generate slogans that could attract and convince those who are in need to get help. I made sure these slogans were not too common-sensical, as banal statements often stir very little attitude change.
Then, I surveyed 10 people asking them to vote for the most convincing slogans. Among those shortlisted slogans, I decided to work with "I'm (not) okay" because the slogan was concise and left space for people to think.
Execution
Choosing fonts was the toughest part of designing the campaign. I paired several fonts together, printed them on a large paper, and saw them from afar and chose the best pair. I used complementary colours for hotline number, for example, blue on red, to make these numbers prominent. While making all the style and layout consistent, I tweaked the texture and changed colours to add variations to the series campaign.
