independent project——stickers
- Project: Stop Cyberbullying
- With a set of stickers (5), I want to deliver the idea that cyberbullying is dangerous and should be stopped.
- The target audience, the teenagers, is a large group of victims of cyberbullying, so it’s necessary to bring up their attention to protecting themselves and also minding their own behaviors.
- Therefore, creating stickers for laptops, it’s a nice way to spread and deliver my message.
- Brainstorm
- Design Brief
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Design problem: As people are using the internet more and more nowadays, the rate of cyberbullying is increasing severely. It is also a harsh problem among teenagers. For this project, I would like to design some stickers that warn of how harmful cyberbullying is, thus stopping it. User/audience My main audience will be teenagers, and most of them love having stickers on their laptops, so it’s a way to spread my belief and also entertain them. Purpose My main focus is to use the media of stickers to stop cyberbullying. Since it is sticking to laptops, it also keeps reminding people that they should not bully others online. Constraints I might not be able to print them out, and I don’t have vpn during having online classes, which constrains my inspiration. Goals I’m hoping to make at least 4 stickers into a set of stickers. Each should have a clear delivery of objects and words. Materials/resources Laptop (Affinity Designer), paper, iPad. Mentors, assistance Mr. Griffin Online sources
Friends
- Audience Profile
- In 2019, Cyberbullying Research Center reported that 36.5% of U.S. teenagers had been cyberbullied in their lifetime.
- In 2021, China Youth and Children Research Center recorded that around 17.4% of Chinese teenagers had been cyberbullied.
- Ten years ago, a 16-year-old teenage girl hang herself at home due to cyberbullying. Before she committed suicide, she posted a youtube video: My Story: Struggling, bullying, suicide, and self-harm about the harsh experience she suffered which then went viral on the internet. She showed how she was being threatened online, and how her classmates were physically bullying her along with cyberbullying after school. She transferred and escaped many times, but nothing helps.
- Starting Process
- brainstorming what I can do
- I chose to dive deeper into the cyberbullying topic since I’m really interested in this topic and really want to raise people’s awareness on it
- Sketches
- I did a brainstorming and easy sketches about what symbols I can use to represent the situation of cyberbullying
- I didn’t create all of them into stickers but I hope to if there’s more time
- I found some references for the mouth and the brain
- Feedback:
- my initial sketch looks like this
- My friend’s feedback was that she was not sure if this is a sticker because it’s just like some elements. Also, by just sketching all negative views, it may seem like I’m supporting cyberbullying.
- I added signs in my refinements to make sure it’s clear that I’m criticizing these actions and that also made it looks more like a sticker. Here’s the detailed sketch for each sticker below:
- Detail
- color scheme
- I decided to use white, black, and grey because I want to keep it simple and not bother the icon itself. At the same time, I chose red since I believe red stand for aggressive and violent which is perfectly representing the perpetrators.
- phone
- I used a handcuff that handcuffed the phone and hand together. This is how we are now, that we cannot leave the phone for even a second, it is as if handcuffed in our hand.
- Also, I used ambiguity to play a wordplay in the text. It is a cell phone, but “cell” also has the meaning of prison, which represents how phones are prisoning us.
- mouse
- By adding teeth to the mouse with blood on it, I tried to create the image that the action of clicking a mouse for spreading unhealthy speeches is harming people online. It seems virtual on the internet but it hurt people physically, like teeth biting.
- mouth
- This is an annoying mouth that I simply wanted to show what people’s aggressive words are like online. We should always mind our words before we speak them out loud both in person and online.
- knife
- I really like this interesting idea. The elements that made up the screen are actually iPhones (if you zoom in closely), and it’s like the phone screen is showing out the knife. Phones are one of the media that people can cyberbully others on, so I chose to use them as elements, to show that their words are like actual knives.
- brain
- With this image, I wanted to sarcasm at people who cyberbullied others. It is a brain which submerged in sewage and was tarnished by it, so their brain isn’t working well. People who chose to cyberbully others have minds that aren’t healthy and they should really think if they are using their brain well.
- Mockups
- Presentation
- In my presentation, I explained the condition, my audience, and my purpose.
- I present all my stickers with a brief introduction of what I’m trying to communicate
- I also included mockups that show the real usages.
- Strengths
- I believe that I created efficient messages for my goal——stopping cyberbullying, but making all negative actions in cyberbullying and adding warnings/signs that we shouldn’t follow it. Also, I made 5 stickers, which means there’s quite a variety between each one, and made it more diverse.
- At the same time, my sketches met my expectation, so I consider this as achieving the success criteria.
- Weaknesses
- If there’s more time, I believe that I can refine my stickers ad make them more professional. I still have some other ideas that I can sketch, but again, due to the time, I wasn’t able to make them out.
- Also, my perspective mainly stood on how the perpetrator behaved, so it might look too aggressive with the red color, this may not really attract audiences.
- What did you enjoy? What do you think you did well? What are you happy with & why?
- I love drawing in Affinity Designer and I improved my pen tool skill. Also, I think I did well in coming up with this topic, cyberbullying, to investigate. As there’s a huge percentage of people who had suffered cyberbullying, this is a widespread topic so the audience is quite broad.
- What was difficult? What didn’t go well?
- The main difficulty would be time. Still, there were quite a lot of technical problems during the process which made me frustrated with wasting time on it. For example, my computer sometimes froze and it’s hard to operate. Also, the mockup templates are having issues downloading or opening and I spent a lot of time searching for other mockups.
- What would you need to do differently next time? What needs further improvement & why?
- I will try to explore more ideas and absorb the lessons from this project. In this way, I can be more organized, and easier to separate my work time.
- I also want to make more stickers and make them into a larger set. And if I have time, I want to make my color scheme more beautiful since now there’s only black, white, grey, and red. With uniformed color and style, it can make the whole set look more comfortable.