Purpose
The following design was created as part of the project for a non-profit California based organization named The Global Clean Water Initiative. The purpose of the project is to create a call-to-action poster with the intent of looking for volunteers to join their initiative in one of their three new satellite offices in Vietnam, Nigeria, and Mexico. The poster not only needs to find volunteers but also needs to increase awareness of the initiative throughout the community. The Global Clean Water Initiative strives to find sustainable solutions, ensures that people around the globe have access to safe water, and preserves the fragile environments of the communities they serve. This project was created for the Mexico satellite office. The poster needs to inform the viewer on the clean water initiative and how important the issues are on a global scale. The colors and imagery used should evoke feelings of engagement, connection, and urgency. With the research compiled on Mexico from the Salem Press Encyclopedia, the target audience consists of the people of Mexico who are an indigenous people with a European influence. These “Mestizos” people, as they are known, are mostly Spanish speaking individuals that live in lower-income urban areas. Northern Mexico has a desert climate while Southern Mexico has a Tropical Rainforest climate. The age group of the target audience would be 15-40 years old as this age group would be the most involved and influential on current global issues such as climate control. This age group of individuals are invested in sustainable products and packaging, clean potable water for all, and climate change. The current conservation and environmental issues that the target audience is facing in Mexico includes lack of potable water especially in North Mexico, deforestation in South Mexico, and industrial and air pollution in major cities like the capital city, Mexico City. With complied research on the Planet Water website, 57% of households in Mexico lack access to a safely managed water supply and 43% of households lack safe sanitation.
Design Rationale
The use of bright colors, intricate patterns, and decorative architecture in Mexican culture is eye-catching and beautiful and needed to be depicted in this flyer. Because Mexican culture is so deep rooted in their beliefs and customs, the chosen color palette reflects that of the rich history of their people. The national bird is the Crested Caracara which has an indigo blue tint and a red shade on its beak. The chosen colors reflect those seen on their beak. The deity Huitzilopochtli who aided the Aztecs in finding their capital city Tenochtitlán (“place of the cactus”), which is now known as the capital city named Mexico City, is a cherished deity in Mexican culture. The deity is also the reason the Mexican flag has a depiction of an eagle, perched on a cactus, eating a snake as this was the prophecy that Huitzilopochtli informed the Aztecs that they would find success and prosperity in this new land (the capital city) once they had seen this depiction of this said eagle. The deity is depicted with a turquoise hummingbird headdress. This turquoise color and shapes that are seen in headdress worn by the deity were also added to reflect this. These traditional colors help to honor the culture and to attract the target audience. The colors picked are natural hues and tones found in nature and the blue hues help to depict clean potable water. The largest scaled shape holding the picture of the water structure is shaped like a large water drop. The typefaces used are seen in Mexican culture. The Wild Mexico typeface is indicative of the influence that the West has on the Northern Mexican desert climate. The typeface is also patterned which, in Mexican culture, patchwork and pattern work is very prevalent. Mestiza is also a modernized, Mexican inspired, serif typeface. The flyer incorporates shapes in the design that were inspired by the patchwork and pattern work in Mexican culture. With these shapes a logo design was created for the Global Clean Water Initiative. These inspired shapes were also used around the design to better highlight the text from the design brief. A border was created around the design that is inspired by the shapes and colors seen in indigenous Mexican culture. The images used in the design depict water features that have architecture that is inspired by Mexican culture. The stone temple shape and the stone lion fountain have a heavy Mexican influence. With Mexican culture being heavily rooted in Indigenous customs and history, their culture would be heavily tied to nature, so using images of water features help tie into the clean water initiative. This project shows skills in layout and publication design. It shows how a design can be bright, fun, informative, and culturally aware. This project shows how an asymmetrical balance can be achieved successfully with multiple disparate elements.
