P2 Poster: Compassion in the times of Covid
Hi, my name is Adrian Avalos (they/them) and I’m a Product Design student at Stanford.
In this project I wanted to impart the importance of Compassion in times of public health responsibility. As someone who would like to emphasize the concept of “You are my other Self” from the poem by Luis Valdez and Domingo Martinez Paredes, I felt that the feeling of Compassion along with solidarity and sonder was especially relevant to today. What I’m trying to do with the poster is get the viewer to recognize not only the importance of maintaining health measures for one’s own safety, but to do so for the health and safety of others. If each person takes care of themselves and makes decisions so as not to spread the disease, the population benefits as a whole.
My first draft of the project had a mango yellow background with heavy sans serif font with the word “COMPASSION” on top, concentric circles of warm colors and two line drawing faces in the middle and lowercase text “you are my other self” at the bottom. After feedback in section and my own feelings, I decided to keep the concept of Compassion as well as having a line drawing of a face but felt that the overall flatness and use of text was too rigid compared to the line drawing.
To come up with the final design, I looked at images of line drawings and abstract forms to develop a feeling of the relationships needed to get a design I would be comfortable with. In section, the graphic designer who was in the breakout room liked the way I drew eyes and suggested to relate it more to Covid by including a reference to masks. I just got the Adobe Creative Cloud so in this project I was becoming familiar with the tools and layering which was very helpful so I wouldn’t have to start over with each element.
To get into the specifics of the poster itself, I decided I wanted a softer, off-white/cream background because it would be less harsh on the eyes while still conveying the feeling of warmth. I chose the colors of the abstract shapes to be more subtle and comforting instead of loud and demanding attention so the viewer’s eyes wouldn’t get overloaded.
The copper orange shape I rotated to be the protective mask that the person would be wearing but also chose a shade that would be reminiscent of the bottom half of a face shape so I wouldn’t have to outline it with the black line drawing.
The brown and reddish shapes I wanted to have overlap and be under the copper mask and create a diagonal line that would draw the reader towards the balance of the text.
The face itself was a simple line drawing I did, and the reason I chose to keep the bottom half of the face instead of hiding it behind the copper mask was to again emphasize the main point: that there is someone who matters behind the mask. Although I tried to make the eyes expressive enough to not need anything, I felt that having just the eyes in dark black with no facial features would have felt unbalanced so I decided to keep the face.
The dark blue shape I wanted to be similar to the hats that healthcare workers wear to protect themselves and others and I felt that the addition of a cool color would balance out the warms. It also finished the shape of the head and made the face register as something with size and bounds and depth instead of a floating, flat face.
The reason I decided to go with “behind every mask, there is a person” instead of “you are my other self” was because the mask idea related more towards Covid and being able to recognize the need for community responsibility. I also chose to hand write the text instead of using a sans serif because of the way the forms in the illustration would have felt confined and there would be too much contrast between the rigidity of the font and the looseness of the graphic.
I wanted to keep the design simple and inviting and felt that the overall message can be consumed without having an overt display of “COMPASSION” in all caps. Overall, I feel that the final image has a lot better sense of flow and layout than the draft and that it feels more organic and believable.
I read an excerpt from Healing the Soul Wound by Eduardo Duran for my Native American Mental Health class and I really connected to the experiences described.
Here’s the link to the final PDF and my society6 if you would like to support!
