Autism Speaks Ad

In my Communication Design course at OSU, We were given a task to design an ad for an organization of our choice.The organization that I had chosen to advertise for was Autism Speaks. Their general approach to advertising is attempting to appeal to emotion. This is often done by using black and white photos of children with autism as well as short stories about these kids in a few sentences. I chose this organization because as a person with autism myself, it means a lot to me.

​

While designing this ad, I wanted to convey a very simple fact about everyone with autism; we are all different. As it is stated on their website, there is not one autism. This idea was represented very well a couple of years ago when Sesame Street debuted Julia, a character with autism. One of the other characters mention, that she is different, but that’s what makes her fun. When I saw this it really made me happy and I decided, for this project, to take a complex disability and make a simplistic ad to express the simple idea of difference.

​

The text in the ad comes from the song, I’m O.K. by Styx, one of my favorite bands. This song, as they say, is about self-esteem and not feeling like you have to be like everyone else. The lyrics I chose to use expresses this in a powerful way. When those around you do not understand you and try to make you conform their idea of “normal” you can say, “I’m O.K.” I like who I am.

​

My intended audience is parents of children who do not have autism. My hope is by seeing this ad, it will encourage them to talk to their kids about other kids they meet who may be autistic. This disability is becoming more and more common. I believe that is why shows such as Sesame Street have decided that it is time to include autism in children’s media.

The design principles I used were balance, texture, similarity and repetition. This design is balanced with nearly the same amount of text on each side with the graphic placed in the middle. The texture of the hand is clear, giving the design a sense of realism and visual weight, which creates a focal point. I used similarity and repetition by matching the color of the hand with the Autism Speaks logo. This blue is the official color of autism. I made the font style on the hand different from the other text to further express the idea of difference in the focal point of the blue hand.