We ArE STL
Art Direction / Branding
background
Following the Michael Brown incident in Ferguson, MO in 2014 I teamed up with several St. Louis designers (Jayvn Solomon and Jonathan Meyers) to envision an initiative that would work towards bringing St. Louis residents together. Seeking to answer the question of "How Would You Change STL?", we developed a brand to be the face of the campaign and collateral to get the conversation started. The goal was to help cultivate an equal and prosperous St. Louis community and to get people to consider developing a forum for discussions. Our vision took on a three-prong approach of:
Asking questions
Connecting the dots (people, businesses, organizations)
Taking action
my role
Collaborating closely with our pro bono assembled team, I art directed the process of producing a brand within the St. Louis community that focused on acknowledging our rich history as a city, it’s struggles and resilience that follows, and establishing a platform for taking action. I took lead on delegating responsibilities and managing our creative process from the conceptual phase to implementing our vision. Using one of our designer’s connections to a social impact art exhibition occurring in St. Louis, I proposed doing an installation revolving around sticky notes that would reveal a hidden message as people wrote their thoughts and arranged them on an interactive pop-up installation. The focus was placed on having an open forum for people to answer the question of “What would you do to change STL?” and letting them contribute their ideas openly and honestly.
The logo
Logo/icon mood board, concepts, and development.
print collateral
The Experience
Shown here is the final state of the board prepped for participants at the IMPTXDESIGN exhibition following them writing their answers to the question “How would you change in STL?”. A hidden message was revealed by the end of exhibition after people completely filled the board stating “Unity looks like this” to illustrate how we all have our own ideas and thoughts to contribute to the discussion.
Post-it Note Responses
the result
At the Creative Reaction Lab Exhibit, IMPTXDESIGN, we asked people what they would do to change St. Louis and then asked them to write their thoughts down on a post-it note. During the time the exhibition was on display we received over 150 responses. Through reading the responses, we were able to provide links on our social channels to organizations and initiatives within the St. Louis community that people could look into supporting and learning more about how to take action.