brief two
copywriting + campaign + conceptual
awareness campaign on homelessness
In the autumn of 2019, I was selected to be an Upstart in the amazing program run by ICAD (Institute of Creative Advertising and Design). The program is a type of mentorship: each Upstart is given a mentor who is an established creative professional working in the industry, to guide them through six-weeks of workshops. 
The briefs are written by the various mentors, and for our second week we were tasked with designing for a non-for-profit charity organisation. It was written by Workgroup, a Dublin based creative agency. We were tasked to create a single or set of promotional posters and related social posts to build awareness of the campaign in Dublin. 

The core insight they wanted to draw attention to was:

 ‘homelessness will continue to get worse until 2023.’​​​​​​​

I wanted to design a not instantly recognisable awareness campaign. I discovered from research that most people tend to avoid homeless people, or avoid campaigns: it's not out of malice, but rather fear and sadness. So, how could I catch the viewer off-guard to create maximum impact, and maybe make them think a bit deeper about the line we were asked to highlight?

I thought deeply about the line: is this really the message that sentence is sending? Will things really just get better after 2023 for homelessness? Research indicated that this prediction was based on the idea that in 2023 the target of 48,000 new houses would make it the first year where supply would exceed demand. But did that really mean that it would just get better? This language is very vague. And okay, great that might happen in the future: but what exists, is now.

I found this insight to be very perplexing. This one line...like, sure I could raise awareness of the line itself: but then what happens? It sounded as believable as...well...

While the brief asked for only posters and social posts, I did think more into the scope of the project. If the non-for-profit organisation had more of a budget: imagine a television advertisement, doing a similar thing to the posters. I fashioned it around the old fortune telling machines. 
↑