Project Strategy & Approach
In researching the healthcare debate, I wanted to concentrate my focus on lower income families and campaigns aimed towards these demographics to eating healthy. I then narrowed my focus to the idea that eating healthy or health itself should not be a social economic issue. It is everybody’s responsibility to eat healthy, not just specific groups. I started researching the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program in my area and was given the link to their official website (http://www.fns.usda.gov/wic/). After seeing the statistics of how many families across the nation the program helps, I designed my PSA to the WIC program.
The next step in the process was to make a word list comprised of words that associated to the word WIC. I brainstormed for two weeks writing down any word that came to mind that associated with the word WIC. At the end of the brainstorming process, I had a total of over 125 words. From those words, I narrowed down a six-word story. The main words that I used were Mother’s, Educate, Healthy, Food, Grow, and Strong. Next, I brainstormed ideas of how I wanted to design and layout the PSA.
PSA: In the actual PSA, I used only primary colors or shades of primary colors (Red, Green, Yellow, and Blue). I also used outlines and borders around the pictures that I chose. I used these two concepts because it resembles building blocks that children play and also signifies the building blocks of learning. The colors also represent children, the main focus of my PSA. Each of the pictures that I used represents the word selected in each scene. The children in each picture represent a different ethnic group, because WIC is not limited to one specific ethnic group. Capturing multicultural children were a big focus of language. I mixed two different relaxing songs in Garage Band titled, Time Lapse 6 and Soft Piano 5 to create a soft nuturing feel to complement the language and images used.
Overall, I know that all of the elements used in the PSA complemented each other and the message was clearly delivered and understood.
Building of the project: The planning part of the project was the easiest for me to develop. I enjoyed putting together the writing, brainstorming and research. I spent a lot of time going through the WIC web site to collect data and calling the headquarters office in Virginia to verify the statistics.
The actual technology part of building the project was the most challenging for me to overcome. I had never used Adobe Photoshop, Flash or Garage Band. Learning the new technology was somewhat frightening at first, but after numerous attempts and trials and errors, I finally managed to make it work.
Key Words That Drive The Visual Solution
Mothers
Educate
Children
Healthy
Strong
Project Tagline
WIC, Education from the start.
Desired Outcome
The bases of the concept that I wanted to capture and develop were the changes that the WIC program has recently undergone for the benefit of the health of America’s children. Just this past August, the WIC program has completely changed the food packages that the program offers, because studies proved that the foods in the old packages were high in fat. The WIC program believes in order to decrease obesity and overweight children, the program needed to offer food packages with foods low in fat, more fruits and vegetables and more grains. I wanted to send a message to people who view my PSA, that just because resources may be limited, this does not mean that people can’t eat healthy or that education is not available to them. My goal was not to solve a problem, I wanted to promote and encourage awareness about the WIC program and that it is a federal program that offers education and promotes healthy diets for income-based eligible families. I designed my PSA to speak to mothers, but specifically to mothers of children on the WIC program.