Week Six | Palladino

Design Strategy and client information:

Founded in 2005, Autism Speaks is the nation’s largest autism advocacy and science organization, dedicated to raising awareness people with autism and advocating for the needs of those affected as well. In addition, Autism Speaks provides funding for the research of causes, treatments and prevention for autism. The organization is all about the power of a community voice, the voice of the autism community, and using that voice to urge lawmakers and government to take the needs of those affect by autism seriously and join the search for the missing pieces of the puzzle. The symbol of the organization is, none other than, a light blue puzzle piece, and their slogan is, “Autism Speaks. It’s time to listen.” for my design strategy, I wanted to create a simple poster to reflect the goals of the Autism Speaks community while advertising one of their upcoming walk events in New York City. After researching the organization and visiting their Web site multiple times, I was able to get a feel of the style of the organization, which was simple and straightforward, but with a softer approach to evoke sympathy and sensitivity. Autism Speaks means business, but with a quiet confidence that prefers educating others of their message rather than forcing their opinions upon the general public.

Choice of typefaces:

All of the type on my poster is in Cronos Pro, a humanist sans typeface that I believed to mimc the typeface of the Autism Speaks logo. Although it is not exactly the same as the organizations logo, I enjoyed the style of the typeface and how the letters don’t have many rough edges to them. Some of the letters, such as the lower case “t” and lower case “y” have curves to their ends. I wanted the typeface to have the same kind of softness and simplicity that I saw on the Autism Speaks Web site. Their Web site is made up of mostly sans serif typefaces and darker pastel colors of blue, green, orange and gray. This is why I chose to keep the typography and its color simple like theirs, using the same colors as well.

Visuals:

I started to create my visual by taking the blue puzzle piece from the Autism Speaks logo and tracing it with the pen tool in Illustrator. I wanted to make my puzzle piece unique while still having it bare some recognizable resemblance to the Autism Speaks logo. My conceptual idea followed, which had me making the puzzle piece into a puzzle person playing an old-fashioned game of telephone with cups and string. My idea behind this was that messages can be misconstrued when passed from person to person. In the past, Autism Speaks has been faced with controversy from the autism community at large, with many people affected by the disorder claiming that they didn’t want Autism Speaks “speaking” for all those with autism. The message of advocacy and understanding used by Autism Speaks has been misconstrued in the past by others, however it has always stayed the same. At the end of the day, Autism Speaks wants people with autism to be heard and have a voice in society, and it is society’s choice to listen or not. The game of telephone signifies this, because messages could be misunderstood as they travel along the path from one person to another, however we all have the choice to listen to the real message and act to make change in our society. I then moved all of my images into InDesign, and, using CMYK color, constructed my poster. The only image I used from online was the Autism Speaks logo on the bottom right corner which was saved as a GIF format with 72 pixels/inch.