- What makes a campaign memorable?
- Campaign needs to be seen.
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Campaign needs to be remembered.
- Campaign needs to invite participation rather than simply deliver information.
Dumb Ways to Die
https://www.dumbwaystodie.com/about
One of the key points I took from Dumb Ways to Die was that cute visual elements do not necessarily mean the audience is children. The campaign uses humour and memorable characters to communicate with a broad audience while delivering a serious message. This challenged my assumption that designing for children meant creating something "cute" and encouraged me to think more carefully about the relationship between audience, visual language, and communication.
A campaign is more than just visuals; it’s a form of communication.
Cuteness isn’t exclusive to children, nor is it the only visual language they enjoy.
Change4Life https://family-action.org.uk/change4life/
UK public health campaign launched by the Department of Health in 2009 to encourage families, particularly those with children under 11, to adopt healthier eating habits and more active lifestyles. Rather than focusing on weight loss, the campaign promotes small, achievable behaviour changes through bright visual identities, memorable characters, and positive messaging. It uses posters, television advertisements, digital media, schools, and community activities to communicate its messages.
Change4Life uses simple illustrations, bright colours, and memorable characters to communicate healthy lifestyle messages. Rather than relying on fear or medical information, it presents health in a positive and approachable way.The campaign showed me that health communication does not have to feel serious or instructional. A clear and engaging visual language can make everyday behaviours feel more accessible and memorable.
Young V&A
Reimagining the brand for the V&A’s Museum in Bethnal Green to express its unique voice within the brand family.https://www.pentagram.com/work/young-v-and-a?rel=search&page=1
The Young V&A identity particularly interested me because it avoids conventional children's aesthetics. Instead, it creates a playful and expressive visual language through typography, colour, and hand-drawn elements. It reminded me that designing for children does not necessarily mean making something "cute", but creating experiences that are engaging, imaginative, and participatory.Graphic Design should create curiosity and participation, rather than simply communicate information.
Emotional Supplies
Rather than treating food as nutrition, the project uses ice cream as a medium to explore memory, emotion, and family relationships through multisensory experiences. This broadened my understanding of food within graphic design, showing that food can carry personal narratives and emotional meanings beyond its practical function.
It encouraged me to think beyond the nutritional value of vegetables and consider how food can also communicate emotions, memories, and personal experiences.
Interactive Culinary Experiences Reshape Children’s Eating Habits
“What‘s your favourite food to eat with rice”
What interested me most was how the workshop encouraged participants to engage with food through memory, language, and interaction instead of focusing on its nutritional value. It inspired me to think about whether vegetables could also become a medium for communication and participation rather than simply being promoted as healthy food.
Reflections and Findings
Children are more willing to try new food when they actively participate.
Positive food experiences are more effective than persuasion.
Design can change behaviours by changing experiences.
Experiments with Form
Choosing the Context I began thinking about where the campaign should take place. Since the project was intended to encourage children to engage with vegetables, I explored different everyday contexts where they naturally encounter food, including supermarkets, wet markets, and school canteens.I eventually leaned towards the school canteen. Unlike supermarkets or markets, which children usually visit with adults, the canteen is a space they experience every day and where they are able to make small food choices independently. This made it a more suitable environment for encouraging voluntary engagement with vegetables.Exploring Design Touchpoints
Tray mats, food baskets, menus, stickers, and collectible cards. At this stage, I was more interested in generating ideas than finding a final solution.
I also sketched an idea for a Seasonal Growing System, linking vegetables with seasons and growth. I imagined that the campaign could continue beyond the canteen, allowing children to experience the full journey of vegetables—from choosing and eating them to understanding how they grow. Although these ideas remained exploratory, they helped me think about the campaign as an ongoing experience rather than a single piece of communication.
Where does the campaign take place?
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What do children come into contact with?
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Can these touchpoints become opportunities for design intervention?
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How can a single meal be transformed into an ongoing experience?
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What do children come into contact with?
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Can these touchpoints become opportunities for design intervention?
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How can a single meal be transformed into an ongoing experience?
Reflection
Although I found the idea engaging, I gradually decided not to develop it further. Looking back, I felt that the reward system was quite idealistic and relied heavily on external motivation. More importantly, similar approaches already exist in many educational activities, and I was concerned that it did not offer a new perspective on children's relationship with vegetables.
As I reflected on these early concepts, I realised that I had been focusing on encouraging children to choose vegetables, rather than questioning how they perceive vegetables in the first place. This shifted my attention from designing reward systems to exploring how children could rediscover vegetables through their senses.
This became the starting point for my next idea: a Five Senses Menu. Instead of rewarding children for eating vegetables, I wanted to encourage them to experience vegetables through sight, smell, touch, taste, and even sound. I hoped that by changing the way children encountered vegetables, they could build curiosity before judgement.
How can I encourage children to choose vegetables?(Stickers, Rewards, Farm) These are still about changing behavior
How can children experience vegetables differently?