August 2025

My main audience for my billboards are those that are against or have their doubts about the right to an abortion. Many of said people make arguments such as it goes against what is said in their religion or that people that have the capacity to become pregnant should be more careful. In creating my billboard and bus stop ads, I hope to reach this audience and cause them to question their beliefs. Restricting abortions leads to consequences that they have not thought about; there are children forced to have children due to rape or incest, and people will continue to have abortions in unsafe ways despite abortion bans. Even in a situation where there was no harm done, a person should have the right to make medical decisions about their own body. Overall, I want to convey to this audience that pushing their beliefs onto others is doing more harm than good and that they are not ending abortions, they are just ending safe ones.

Before starting to design, I knew that my social issue was the right to an abortion, and my audience were those who are against it. I wanted to change the attitude that abortions are a decision that people make lightly; it is a serious medical procedure that nobody wants to endure but must. When researching my audience, I found that they focused mainly on how abortions go against their religion. They also believed there are people out there abusing the option of abortion, saying women used it as a form of birth control. Oftentimes, the argument that only a small percentage of pregnancies are a result of rape or incest, this small percentage equates to 65,000 people since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. 65,000 is not a small amount of people, and it does not include those that went unreported. In addition, restricting abortion access leads to an increase in unsafe abortions. Around 68,000 people a year die as a result of unsafe abortion, and those that do not die often have lasting health complications as a result. I wanted to highlight these issues when creating my billboard campaign. I chose the Texas Abortion Advocacy Network as my client because of the locality. I knew I wanted to create digitally in order to use images of people that have been affected by this. I would stick to a color pallete of mostly white, black, and red.

Citations:

Haddad, L. B., & Nour, N. M. (n.d.). Unsafe abortion: unnecessary maternal mortality. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2709326/

Simmons-Duffin, S. (2024, January 24). Raped, pregnant and in an abortion ban state? Researchers gauge how often it happens. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/24/1226161416/rape-caused-pregnancy-abortion-ban-states

After creating my ideation sketches, I got helpful feedback from my peers and Professor. With my third ideation sketch for the billboards, Professor suggested I make the girl look more dejected. Due to this, I specifically looked for an image of a young girl and her child where she looked despondent. In addition, for my second bus stop sketch Professor told me I could make the hanger look dirty/unsanitary as well as shorten the wording. I ended up taking and implementing both pieces of advice in my prototypes. I found a fitting image for my billboard, and although I could not find a preexisting image of a dirty hanger, I made the background look squalid and added some blood to the hanger to get the same effect. After creating my prototypes, I presented them to get some feedback. Professor said he had no notes and that the designs were very solid. In addition, my classmate Classmate 1 said that the message was very clear as she knew what social issue I was discussing. Classmate 2 mentioned that the typography was very fitting as well, saying that it was clear enough to read from the road and catch one's eye with the splash of red.I feel like I achieved my original design intent by creating a sense of urgency and a little fear. From the beginning, I knew I wanted to highlight the unacceptable truths of restricting abortions, and I feel as though I did so through my designs. While in my ideation the words were "What about her future?", I wanted to say the same thing but in a more subtle way. I instead went with "She should be holding a teddy bear, not a baby" because this emphasized her age and makes the audience put themselves into her shoes. For the bus stop, I originally had a much longer saying, but with the help of Professor, I was able to shorten this and create an unsettling and more impactful statement. What I felt worked well in this composition was the typography and the slogans I came up with. I wanted something simple and bold for the font so it would be easily readable, and I used the red/tilting to emphasize. The slogans were meant to cause the audience to question their opinions by calling upon a sense of empathy. If I were to redo this process, I would maybe include several different images of girls who have been impacted by restricted abortion access.