About the Project

Through A Conversation With My Anxiety, I want to help bridge the gap of mental health between art and design and inspire other artists and designers to do the same. This booklet doesn’t only help bridge this gap but it also became therapeutic for me to create. Through creating this, I was able to express my anxiety in a creative way and thus I was able to learn more about myself.

The Beginnings

This project was inspired by the lack of meaning present in the pieces I did before this one. I wanted to push myself to make something personal and eventually landed on making something based off of my anxiety.

I always thought that graphic design pieces couldn't have meaning attached to them so I decided to use that as my medium.

Early mockup of the booklet

Research

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Research

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Read more research I did here

Mental health has always been a subject present in paintings dating back to as early as the 15th century. These paintings use elements such as color or certain brush strokes to help the viewer feel the emotions they are trying to portray. Seeing all of these beautiful paintings about mental health inspired me. I love how the painters were able to make me feel anxious or uneasy through their paintings. Like how Vincent Van Gogh used color to portray different emotions and how Edvard Munch used synesthesia to help convey the anxiety he was feeling to his viewers. This caused me to wonder how I could create something like these paintings about my own mental health.

I decided to do some research about mental health and graphic design to gain an understanding of how others are using their mental health in design. Through this, I discovered there is a lack of representation of mental health in the design work. Where it was present, it consists of strictly informational content in the forms of pamphlets, information in books, or educational websites. As a graphic designer and someone who struggles with mental health issues, I wanted to explore how I can represent my mental health through graphic design but using the aspects that painters use to portray mental health. This put the question into my mind of how can I portray my mental health through graphic design? And how can I combine the way designers and artists portray mental health in my work?

In order to create this booklet, I had to do a lot of personal research to figure out exactly what anxiety is to me. I went back to when I first discovered I had anxiety in middle school. I remember feeling like something was wrong with me because I felt nervous all of the time. I was embarrassed that I had anxiety. This reflection caused me to do some research into my specific type of anxiety, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and through this I discovered that GAD often occurs alongside other anxiety disorders like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Discovering this caused me to realize how important it is for me to include aspects of my OCD in the design and even include it as a part of the conversation.

Sketch 1

Sketch 2

Early Text

Sketch 1

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Sketches

To the left is some early sketches of protentional page layouts as well as early writing for the text for the pages.

Test Layouts

These are some early tests layouts I did. The first two images are based off of sketches I did but exploring what they looked like with text in Illustrator.

The next couple images, I was playing with using the color purple because I personally don't like that color and thought it would be good to use to represent my anxiety. I quickly strayed away from that idea though, because of feedback I received that it wasn't making anyone anxious like I intended.

The last set is where I began to play with the colors red and blue. I wanted to have the beginning be more red because that is where I was talking about the bad aspects of my anxiety. I wanted the end to be a bright blue to symbolize calmness when I was talking about how my anxiety has changed over the years. I played with creating a gradiant between the pages to go from red to blue.

test layout 2

test layout 1

test layout 2

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The Final Design

Each page of the booklet I created has a unique layout. I drew on ideas from painters who portrayed their mental health in order to design the layouts. I wanted to use lines, shapes and colors to create a feeling of anxiety within the viewer. Because of this, I used a limited color palette which consists of red, white, black and blue. Red is often associated with anxiety and can cause the viewers to feel anxious. Dark colors, like black for example, are associated with a dark state of mind. I wanted to use these colors in conjunction with each other to create the dark, anxious feeling in the viewer. Blue is often associated with calmness. I used blue towards the end of the booklet to go along with the shift from bad things about my anxiety to positive things about my anxiety. I included some blue elements throughout the booklet to transition the color shift.

Jellyfish

One common element throughout the booklet is jellyfish. I have a personal connection to jellyfish with my anxiety. When I am anxious, I feel like I am drowning underwater, tangled up in my thoughts; similar to jellyfish tentacles. So they represent how my anxiety makes me feel. Jellyfish are often seen as free flowing creatures that go with the flow and let the current take them away. The other way they represent my anxiety is they represent how I want to feel when I am feeling anxious. I desire to go with the flow and have no care in the world.

I used jellyfish tentacles throughout the booklet to help convey the anxiety and calmness I wanted the reader to feel. In the beginning pages, the tentacles interrupt the text, creating a feeling of anxiety. The jellyfish is revealed at the end pages of the booklet and it plays along with the text creating a sense of calmness.