AWSC Safety Campaign

Goal: Reduce secondary drownings at Australian beaches via a new public safety campaign. Focus on the importance of flotation devices when enacting a rescue and further educating visitors about the rip current hazard.
Media: Flexible.
Single Minded Proposition: A life jacket, a boogie board, an Esky, or an empty water bottle or two on a rope can save yours and your child’s life at the beach!
Additional note: The most important thing was to stop and think, assess the situation, and call triple zero.

Ideation

The goal of this prompt was quite straight forward, however this project was done on a fairly short deadline so the final concept is not too complicated.

As with all projects I started by noting down all the core information and then developing a keyword cloud.
An early concept that my mind took me to was the idea of the male urge (over 80% of affected people were men!) to "be the hero". This is not necessarily a bad thing, but heroes don't go into dangerous situations alone.

At first I thought about flotation devices as sidekicks — Robins and whatnot. However I realised another, perhaps more obvious, angle was the hero's tools — Thor's hammer, Captain America's Shield, et cetera. I made the next obvious connection to sea-themed heroes and ultimately went for a nondescript Poseidon / Neptune-esque character.

Working the final concept

Once again I leveraged a series of Adobe Stock images and some light photo editing to complete the final poster concept.

I edited the trident out of this Poseidon's hand and replaced it with a life saver (made in Adobe Illustrator).

I used this image of a picturesque Australian beach. The final version has some light filtering to be less prominent.
Initially I was searching for generic beaches but I quickly realised that Australian beaches have a unique vibe that can't be replicated.

Final Concepts & Refining

Finally, I put it all together in Adobe InDesign using a variety of shapes, making sure to include some elements that I considered mandatory to the messaging. A reminder of the steps to take if an emergency occurs and a simple call to action to visit the website for more information.

As with the Wear it Purple campaign, the final design went through a few minor refinements which are shown below.