The Project
Every year Essex Police see’s a rise in the number of incidents of domestic abuse over the festive period. In each of the last two years prior to this project the force recorded its highest daily number of reported domestic abuse incidents on New Year’s Day, with 168 incidents reported on January 1st 2016 and 130 the previous year. The brief was to reduce domestic abuse incidents and the serious harm caused to victims with a campaign. Working with partners ‘The Change Project’ we aimed to engage with perpetrators and encourage them to “reflect” on their abusive behaviour.
The Design
The creative idea of the project evolved around people reflecting on their own behaviour. We worked with Essex based photography studio CliQ to create a set of images. The idea being that what was happening in the photo wasn’t always the full picture. Each image would have a mirror telling a different story of abuse and domestic violence. We wanted the perpetrator to reflect on their behaviour and see it from another angle. Then offer them help to change their behaviour and raise awareness of domestic abuse.
I wanted to keep the graphic elements of the posters as simple as possible. The posters also had a lot of logos on which took some attention off the images. Each poster had a question that was highlighted by one main word. Each in a different colour so each story was individual. I used a bold slab font that worked with the images. It was bold enough to be readable but still make the images the main focus. I added little square details to the questions to hold them all together so they didn’t float within the photo. This brought the design together and balanced the posters design. The logo had already been designed before I started the role but was nice and clean to place in.
The Result
The campaign had a great reception from partners and won two awards. The CIPR Excellence – Best Public Sector Campaign and The PRCA DARE Award – Public Sector Award. More importantly the campaign worked and there was a significent growth in calls to the charity helping people in abusive relationships.
