Avoidant / Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) Awareness Campaign
Creative Brief
Discover a topic, prepare a communication design proposal highlighting a multi-component system to design and fully execute.
Process
Discover
Through a curious investigation, write a summary that analyzes your observations of the times research and expand on your initial reaction to the writing prompt, keeping detailed records of your thoughts and discovery along the way to identify a message or theme.
Respond
Based upon your discoveries, carefully consider and identify a message to be communicated with consideration to multiple media options you may investigate the development of a visual experience. Prepare a design proposal describing what you want to say, who you will say it to, for, or with, and how (in what forms). A system of artifacts (3 or more deliverables in different media) is required.
Resonate
Work toward the development of your visual experience through the application of an exploratory creative process. Provide visual evidence of your exploration; showing multiple working directions is required. Starting with one idea and executing it will not be acceptable
Revise
Create well-developed comps.
Reveal
Finalize fully executed visual experience. All work must be fully executed (printed, digitally published, etc.) and photographically documented. Consider the following requirements when submitting your work:
Print-based work needs to be printed, constructed (if required by the form), and photographed both in context and, separately, with portfolio-quality product shots showing details of the object.
Screen-based work should be presented with screengrabs in a well-organized PDF in addition to live links (URL, student pages, YouTube, or other appropriate live delivery methods are acceptable).
Work designed for the environment will be addressed on an individual basis.
PDFs from program files will not be accepted as completed work.
Process books should be saved as reduced-size PDF files. Live links and/or video files may be embedded directly into the PDF by creating an interactive PDF with Adobe Acrobat.
Process books should be well organized and prepared as if presenting to a client. Avoid unnecessary content, such as copying and pasting all of the assignment criteria, and keep in mind that not every word of peer or professor feedback is relevant to showing your process. Specific comments that have directly shaped or influenced your work may be included in the context of showing the outcome of the influence.
Process books should be minimally designed and well organized, with emphasis on the content. Distracting design interferes with the purpose of the process book—to showcase your methodology. Err on the side of simplicity in terms of design.
A Bit More of My Process
Moodboard and Type Study
I wanted to use a handwritten font because my research showed the millennials (my target audience) respond better to authenticity. Then I remembered how my daughter’s handwriting is so neat that it would make a good font. I decided to create her handwriting into a font that I could use for the headlines.
18”x24” posters - printed
Far Left (Purple Poster)
The idea for this poster was to mimic the dietary guidelines for Americans, called “MyPlate” but showing how it would look for a child with ARFID. There are round crackers in the background for texture and repetition of the same types of food.
Center Left (Berry-colored Poster)
The goldfish on the sides of the poster are sad. There is a heap of goldfish crackers as a light background texture in addition to the huge plate of crackers. Also, I put the words “every single day” in their own individual cracker rather than just using a period to make the long, dramatic pauses that denote dread. Putting them each in their own cracker ensures they’ll be read slower than if they were just in a normal sentence, with the reading tempo adding the effect of someone speaking with dread.
Center Right (Green Poster)
Rather than using one single yogurt at the top, I opted for a row of the same yogurt to contrast with the row of different yogurts beneath it. It is meant to not only look repetative, but also look like you would see them at the grocery store.
Far Right (Blue Poster)
I played on the “well-rounded” aspect of the copy and made this literally round. It also helps that the cereal itself is round.
Poster Set
The purpose of these rack cards is for parents to give to pediatricians and/or parents to take home from the doctor’s office to seek more information. The fact is that ARFID is still largely unheard of in the general medical field and parents are feeling unheard. The aim of this is for them to hand something legitimate to their doctor -OR- to get something trustworthy from their doctor.
Rack Card Set
These were made in two sizes: for Facebook and Instagram. I won’t show both sets since they’re almost identical. There are also static and animated (GIF) versions of each.
Social Media Post Set
One-Pager
At the last minute - just before finalizing my project - I went to the ARFID Facebook group and stumbled upon a post by a mom that said, “…anyone have a doctor not take you serious[?] I finally figured out all these years what my son have which is ARFID and I recently [brought] it up that we are down to basically two food choices and he is starting to lose weight…and she [the doctor] basically told me not to give him options.”
I know that feeling of being unheard. It’s infuriating, frustrating, and disheartening. It’s a sad truth that even after being in the DSM-5 for over a decade, many medical professionals have not even heard of ARFID, let alone take it seriously. That needs to change.
So I figured the one thing I could do now, to help at least one parent, is to create a one-pager to help them explain this to their doctor. I made sure to reference my sources and provided QR codes that would allow easy access of the DSM-5 Diagnostic Criteria. If I can help one, just one parent, feel heard, then this was a success.
Feel free to download it, print it, pass it along, etc. All I ask is that you not try to pass it off as your own and don’t remove the references.