Calm in Chaos

Brianna Martin: Strategic Communications

The directions for this final assignment were pretty ambiguous. “Think of a message that you think is important to communicate right now, something you care about.” From there, we were asked to create a visual component, a poster with a call to action. I originally thought that it would take me some time to think of a topic and then create an engaging message, but something came to mind relatively quick.

Mental health has been a continuous struggle for myself since freshman year of high school, and these past two months have provided some unfortunate/tragic events that have reminded me of how important it is to take control of your mental well-being. Everyone’s mental health challenges are unique, and mine tends to focus on dealing with stress. I think as college students in specific, it is really easy to get caught up in school, work, friendships and relationships, finances, etc. and it is even easier to fall into a habit of not letting your body and mind take a second to breathe. May is mental health awareness month and that combined with my own stress as my junior year of college wraps up and the unfortunate events in my life these past few months help me to decide on creating a message to remind those to find calm in their chaos.

Creating the message

I wanted to create the message/call to action that I would show in my visual first. I know that I wanted the wording to be fairly simple. I began brainstorming ways to say the word “stress”. I went right to a thesaurus and found words like:

Anxiety    Tension    Restlessness    Unease

I didn’t like any of the words that I was finding. I then decided to switch gears a little. I still wanted to create a message that depicted stress, but I chose to focus on the business of our daily lives. I then found words like

Hectic    Overloaded    Overwhelmed    Chaotic

I liked “chaotic” but liked the word “chaos” better. Once I decided upon chaos, the rest of the phrase just came to mind. I had heard variations of this phrase before and thought that it would do a good job of representing the idea that was in my head. I then played around with the specific phrasing of the words.

“Find calmness within the chaos”

Designing the Visual

These three images all stood out to me when I typed “chaos” into google images. I like that they are in black and white and I think they all creating a chaotic vibe. I used these images as inspiration as I started to play around in Photoshop.

I created these two designs. They are pretty similar and I just used the paint tool to create these irregular shapes. I made it look like a border so that I could insert my text into the middle.

I created this visual and really enjoyed it, but after in class critiques we found that a few things needed to be changed. Number one was the phrasing.

“Find calmness in the chaos”  Calmness or calm?

“Find calm in the chaos”   –Do I need the “the”?

“Find calm in chaos”   Final decision

Second was the way the phrase fit into the black and white background. If I wanted to depict calm being inside of chaos I would need to rearrange my phrase. It was also brought up during critiques that my background I designed may not actually be that “chaotic”. Although the shapes I created were irregular, the way I placed them may look more like a pattern. I then went back to Photoshop to create something a little more busy looking and to also rearrange the placement of my phrase.

For my final visual, I tried to create a background that was a bit more scattered. I also decided to change my fonts. I played around with a lot of different fonts for “chaos” and found this one online. I also decided to make it in all caps. I wanted to find a different font for the word “calm” as well. I rearranged the phrasing too so that “calm” was laying in a simpler part of the design and “chaos” is placed right in the messy lines.

NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness is the nation’s largest mental health organization. They have affiliates all over the country, including one right in St. Paul. They offer resources to educate those on mental illness, advocate and listen to those who are suffering, and lead events and public awareness events to fight stigmas and encourage understanding. It is always a good time to learn more about mental health, but it being mental health awareness month creates even more urgency. I added the Minnesota affiliate logo and also their website.

I am really happy with my final poster. I really like the message I chose and how I chose to portray the overall feel. I think a lot of different people could relate to this message and it sheds a light on mental illness without being over bearing. It is easy for those, even without mental illness, to get caught up in the stress in their everyday lives and I think it is important to take a second and find calm in your chaos.

P.S. I loved the saying so much I ended up getting a tattoo of it!