1 in every 10 women within a year of giving birth will experience postpartum depression in the UK. The solution is not easy but the prevention could be….

“Mother’s Mind” is an awareness campaign designed to inform future and young mothers about postpartum depression. It is a campaign to help them recognising it, talking about it and breaking from the traditional image of “perfect” motherhood by inviting them to a weekend of conferences and workshops. On this occasion various touch points have been considered: informative booklet provided to reassure them, posters and billboard to inform them, social media presence to get them involved and other conference “goodies” to empower them.

The key concept of “Mother’s Mind” is based around the idea that postpartum depression can distort the perception of young mothers, partially hiding the reality from them. In other words, this campaign immerse them into how it feels to have intrusive thoughts convincing them that they are not good mothers.

Designed in a minimalist way to not fall into the clichés of conventional campaign targeting mothers, the campaign is made of an eye catching tone of voice (which might make you feel uncomfortable), strong hierarchy (through colour contrast) and “off” layout or graphic elements (uncomfortable alignments, no straight lines, sketchy image treatment). To keep this campaign minimalist, only 3 colours have been used: an electric blue (that I called “baby blues”), a darker blue that you might struggle to see at first (this is eaxctly how postpartum depression can be) and a soft pink. They respectively symbolise the depression, the reality still being there despite of obstructive thoughts and the motherhood that all mothers dream of. In terms of typographic choices, WillandGrace was perfect to convey this uncomfortable yet feminine campaign.

On a more personal note, this campaign has been a real passion project on a subject close to my heart and my own mother has helped me to bring more depth into my research phase.