University Final Major Project
This project is based around the concept of different ways of dealing with anxiety and that experiencing anxiety is perfectly normal. In order to explore this, I created a variety of unconventional help guides in the form of zines as well as posters visualising different ways of dealing with anxiety. My project’s content was informed by my personal experiences with anxiety as well as that of other people. These posters and zines were created using a mixture of traditional and digital processes and media. I used a combination of highlighters, fine liners and then cut up and glued on letters in different fonts onto A4 paper to get the initial layouts and designs. I then scanned these and vectorised them in Adobe Illustrator. From here I edited some of the text I had handwritten to become different fonts/ text. I printed these designs onto matte coated 120gsm A4 and A3 paper.
For this zine, which is called ‘The Misleading Social Butterfly’s Guide to Anxiety’ and is the first version of this zine, I used reverse psychology and exposure therapy methodologies to inform its content. I included in this zine scenarios that I found made myself or others feel anxious, which are public speaking, tunnels, claustrophobic spaces, germs, loud noises and meeting new people. These scenarios were included so that the person reading the zine is distracted from their current anxieties by feeling anxious about the scenarios that they are reading about. I made the colours of this zine bold and the layout to be close together so that not only could the content cause anxiousness or uncomfortableness, but the design too. The final page is a prompt of reflection to the reader to allow them to reassess their anxieties.
This is the second version of the zine above. The content and purpose is the same, the only difference is that the content is bigger and more tightly packed, there are slightly more illustrated elements to aid this, and that the coloured backgrounds are not included.
For this zine, which is called ‘The Considerate Social Butterfly’s Help Guide to Dealing With Anxiety’, it’s purpose is to be a positive, genuine help guide for anyone dealing with anxiety to use. All of these zines are small enough so they can be available and accessed if someone were to need it. For example, these could easily fit in a bag or in a pocket.
For this zine, which is called ‘Dumb Ways to Deal With Anxiety’, its purpose is to show the reader certain scenarios that some people might find make them anxious, and then turn them on their heads by making them silly or absurd. This is not intended to be a realistic help guide, but more as something silly or funny to put a smile on someone’s face if the are feeling anxious.
These posters were created based on my coping methods to dealing with anxiety. Their intent is to show that different people deal with their anxiety in many ways, continuing on from the themes of different methods employed in the zines.