This was a project that I was extremely excited about. The opportunity to create three meaningful posters that could help save lives is a dream and highlight for me as a Graphic Designer. I thought about my topic endlessly. The issue wasn't in finding a topic that was important enough. My issue was choosing something that I could do justice to in the time that I had. So I went with distracted driving for my topic. This topic was something that I was intimately familiar with having grown up with the advent of text messaging. 

So I started my design process by looking at the work of those who came before me. There was a lot of poster and ads about distracted driving from which I could draw inspiration. After getting a few ideas I spent a good amount of time brainstorming slogans. I came up with a list of about 40 - 50 slogans for distracted driving. Not all of them were winners though. I chose the 10 best ones and created a sketch for each of them. Some of them even got two sketches. 

After my sketches, it was time to get to work on the design. I knew that I would want to keep the colors consistent throughout the project. Red always seemed like a good warning color. I also had a nice off-white color in mind as well to help the text stand out. With the colors sorted, I got to create the digital images. 

As you can see, some things changed between the sketches and the final digital images. However, the concepts remained. I wanted memorable posters that would stand out. The image of the scales with the phone on one scale and the stick figure body dumped lifeless into the other scale is honestly something I wish I had more time to work on. The imagery here, at least to me, is unsettling. I think of it as a strong visual to warn against the dangers of distracted driving. 

The buckle-up poster came to me because I was thinking about yin and yang. Which is why I settled on the opposing arrows instead of what I originally sketched. I enjoy the simplicity that it offers. 

For the final poster, I wanted something easy that was recognizable as the meme that it was. It was fun to recreate this meme and use it for my purpose. 

I enjoyed this project and I hope you enjoyed the work I did here. And remember, don't text and drive.