Trash Dash

I was hired by Keep America Beautiful to theme creative for an upcoming event. The challenge was that there was an extremely tight turn around. I was brought on 3.5 weeks before the event was to occur, and while the run of show and event layout was in place, I needed to create a cohesive experience and ship pieces to the print vendors quickly- the first print deadline was 4 days after I started. I scheduled a kickoff meeting, and then cancelled my weekend plans.

I wanted to bring elements of land and water, to reinforce the message of taking care of the earth. I didn’t want to be heavy-handed with the concept though, as I wanted to have an illustrative aspect to the creative to emphasize what was at stake. When I hit upon the solution of continuous lines to stylize the illustration, the green and blue circles allowed my illustrations to shine. When I realized that it would not always be appropriate to stroke the illustrations in white or blue depending on the positioning against the blue and green circles, I opted to mix in an organic soft blue background. I also used the same idea to emphasize the white stokes of the illustrations when a piece called for a flood of the background.

There were many different asks for this project, but the most important was that it was sustainable. Designers are so used to building and building that it was an interesting challenge to come up with a system that could be used repeatedly. All of the creative can be recycled or will be reused for other trash dashes.