Graphic Design 2.2: Design Futures, Project 1: ‘Back to the Future’ Assignment 1
For this assignment, design and present a set of digital assets for onscreen delivery that informs, educates or instructs a chosen audience about a specific area of social, cultural, political or technological change. You will need to select an area that reflects your own concerns as a member of society.
Choose one of the following outputs:
6 slide carousel post for social media - your design should be square format (1080 x 1080 pixels) and work as a set/series and/or sequence of slides that work as a looping post.
A series of 6 Web banners for online promotion - 300 x 250 pixels (png or jpeg)
A set of 6 Wallpapers for mobile phone - 640 x 960 pixels (png or jpeg)
In responding to this assignment, you will need to identify - and base your designs responses on - specific facts, statistics, information or quotes. You will also need to consider the volume of visual information that saturates our screens whenever we go online. How will your message stand out? Consider what you have learned about type, image, colour and layout so far on the course? How do you establish visual clarity, consistency and impact?
Document your process in your learning log. Once you have developed your idea post a link to the Design Futures Project Padlet.
Review any work posted by other students and consider what works well and what could be improved, post a considerate and supportive comment.
I began to research screen addiction, including social media use, tv/media, video games, internet addiction etc. I took notes/screenshots of any statistics or graphs etc for reference when creating my digital assets. I also made notes on ideas about structure, layout and anything else that came to me as I researched.
Figure 3 shows results from a study (and Chat GPT helping to break down the information for me) that I could use within my digital assets to help convey to the viewer how screen/smartphone use affects depression, anxiety and sleep. A question I keep asking myself is ‘how can I make this interesting?’ this information is something I personally would immediately become bored of/click away. I need to consider the language I use within the design, alongside interesting and engaging layouts/illustrations in order to keep someone scrolling through my social media carousel.
Figure 4:
Figure 8:
Figure 9:
I continued to make notes and brief sketches of any ideas that came to mind. I considered my subject and how I would like to convey information/what information I would like to include. The goal of the social media carousel is to inform and educate the viewer, aiming to help them consider their screen-time, the consequences of long screen viewing times and to question if it’s what they want- hopefully without being boring or condescending. My key idea here is to not bombard the viewer with too much information. I need to pick and choose important elements to include.
When researching carousels/advert layouts I came across some good advertisements from various brands which were very minimal and would work great for viewing on a mobile, ad thumbnail and on billboards. I compiled some mood boards of these adverts to reference when designing my carousel as I felt that the minimal illustrations paired with only very little information were very effective and the ‘less is more’ approach is something I will need to consider- particularly at the beginning of the carousel in order to draw the viewers attention and prevent them from scrolling away.
Figure 30:
I continued to make mood boards including various styles of design and illustration to reference and inspire some ideas. I also made a quick word association page and highlighted words that I felt could be strong/effective visuals.
I decided that my target audience is 16-25. I feel like this is a very important age group where most people would be using screens/social media/gaming/computers for work. This age range is also influenced a lot by things that they see on social media-which would make this post a good opportunity to try to be engaging enough to be read/considered.
Moving forwards I began to test with typefaces. I wanted to choose a typeface/combination of that is easily legible, modern and engaging for my audience, without looking bland. I then went onto doing some colour palette experiments with various colours to see what works best. I liked the idea of using bright colours or using at least one bold colour to contrast the darker ‘cult’ theme.
Referring back to my initial sketch/layout ideas, I designed some minimal symbols to represent what each carousel slide was about. The symbols were very minimal and inspired by app/website/social media icons.
After creating this layout I wanted to add some texture and fun to the slides as they were looking very flat. I looked through my collection of scanned textures with the ‘cult’ and ‘screens’ theme in mind. I continued to experiment with layering various textures with each slide.
After some experimentation and returning later to look at my design I had decided that the overall design of my carousel was flat/boring and not very engaging. The typeface used wasn’t as interesting or effective as I’d like it to be and there felt like no real need to keep scrolling to the next slide when imagining I am the viewer. I wanted to create a minimal design and focused too much on not over crowding the slides or overwhelming the viewer with information, that the design itself wasn’t very engaging. I looked back at my initial sketches and began to experiment further with my designs.
The typeface used was Gotham Ultra, a change from the previous typeface, as again I felt this looked more dramatic without needing to use all caps text, but remained legible and inviting. I experimented with some hand drawn icons and other elements in an attempt to create a more tactile feel to the carousel.
Using illustrator and going back to some illustrations created for the previous task and other design for this assignment, I created a head/brain image. I then created some more images in Midjourney to represent the negative aspects of screen use the carousel mentions such as stress, anxiety and depression. I edited and layered these images to fit the darker/grunge style of the carousel.
An idea from my initial sketches that I hadn’t experimented with yet was having an illustration or text cross 2 of the carousels with it’s goal to be to engage the viewer into continuing to read/see what’s on the next slide. Looking back at some of the icons I had already designed, I thought that a chain breaking to represent change, could work. I experimented with this and the colours of it for the last 2 slides.
I made a quick spider diagram of my initial ideas in response to the brief. I underlined the subjects/ideas that stood out to me personally as being important or the ones I felt most compelled to produce work about.
I decided to move forwards with the topic of ‘screen addiction’ and the dangers of too much screen usage (being discussed in the form of a social media carousel)- something everyone considers and hears about daily, but I felt compelled to give my own take on it. ‘Screen addiction’ can also encompass a lot of other topics I noted such as; anxiety, loneliness, identity crisis in young people, online radicalisation, comparison culture, digital detoxing, new age jobs, attention span. I also liked the idea of a challenge to try and create digital assets that were different and make the reader engaged as opposed to the ones I regularly see from influencers discussing the topic or from adverts promoting products or apps etc.
Figure 1:
I came across various examples of effective social media carousels (figure 29,30). The language used is interesting, and questions seem to be a good way to start a post/to reel the viewer in. As I am not ‘selling’ anything with my design, only providing information, this gives me more freedom to try and be creative with the way I get the information across.
I liked the idea of having a theme/metaphor/almost satirical post to make the carousel as interesting and engaging as possible. I had a few initial ideas and expanded on them with my ‘theme ideas’ spider diagram.
I kept referring back to the same idea for a theme, which was a ‘cult’. I liked the idea that we are all in a ‘cult’ addicted to screens. I felt that this could work well for my target audience to keep them engaged with the carousel. I had some rough ideas for how to convey the information/facts I wanted to, with an aim to keep it satirical/light hearted and engaging. I began to make notes and sketch some rough ideas of different styles and types of information.
I began to layout my design, going with a orange/black/tan colour palette. With each slide I was very conscious to not overload them with too many words or too much information as this could result in people very quickly scrolling away. I aimed to be careful with the tone of the text written to not try and sound bossy or too serious.
I began to re-imagine the first slide, looking back at my initial sketches and research for inspiration. I particularly liked the billboards of figure 22/39 and how cohesive they were. I wanted my second design to be an improvement on the first, and to be more cohesive/playful with it’s design.
I experimented with a phone image made in Midjourney. I edited the image and created a broken screen shape that came away from the phone image, then making a spiral layout. The colours chosen this time I felt were stronger/more dramatic and better reflected the darker theme of the carousel. The pink colour was contrasting to the darker black/grey/white to be engaging and add a more positive feel to the carousel.
Final Design:
Resources:
Figure 1: Biello-Taylor, A. (2023) Screen addiction, Addiction Center. Available at: https://www.addictioncenter.com/behavioral-addictions/screen-addiction/ (Accessed: 29 August 2025).
Figure 2: Dresp-Langley, B. and Hutt, A. (2022) ‘Digital addiction and sleep’, International journal of environmental research and public health, 19(11), p. 6910. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19116910. (Accessed: 29 August 2025).
Figure 3: Demirci, K., Akgönül, M. and Akpinar, A. (2015) ‘Relationship of smartphone use severity with sleep quality, depression, and anxiety in university students’, Journal of behavioral addictions, 4(2), pp. 85–92. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.4.2015.010. (Accessed: 29 August 2025).
Figure 4: Collyer, A. (2024) Addiction in the digital age: The new epidemics, UK Addiction Treatment Centres. Available at: https://www.ukat.co.uk/blog/society/addiction-in-the-digital-age-the-new-epidemics/ (Accessed: 29 August 2025).
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