Mehrafza Mirzazad
#YESMEANSYESNY Campaign Design
for Rochester Institute of Technology
Issues
Gender Issues
Education
Equality
International Development
Services
Visual Branding
Illustration
Brand Strategy
System Reconstruction
Credits
Design Director
Graphic Designer
Industrial Designer
Design Researcher
In 2014, New York State and California State signed the nation’s first affirmative consent standard for colleges and universities to use in campus sexual assault cases. YES MEANS YES campaign is an educational process which the youth in universities and colleges learn about consent standards.
Consultant
Photographer
TitleIX RIT offers and educates the students related to sexual assaulting and consent in the campus area. It provides many brochures and workshops during the first day of orientation. Due to time constraints during orientation, workshops are very fast, giving lots of new information to students. As a result, they are unable to absorb the information well.
This is demonstrated here by three scenarios that the designers have highlighted:
1.Most of the freshman students (American or International) do not know about these brochures and centers.
2.Only in the case of need for assistance, the students access to these brochures and centers.
3.The research and Interview show that most of the victims do not want to share their experience with anyone. They feel alone, depressed and ashamed.
Our team decided to use two methodologies to create change at the RIT campus:
1. Slow education
Slow education is a way that educates the community and leads them to deeper learning. Slow education applied on smoking and driving alcohol regulation over time changes the community's behaviour on a big scale.
2. Create identity between the students and RIT
Humans are not just born with an identity, they adopt and seek out identity throughout their lives.1
Identity is based on people's interest, moral, values and many other matters. Identities are also a central path to the people's decision making. Students on campus care about their identity related with their knowledge, success, and life.
Most of the foreign students do not feel at home and feel disconnected from the students. #YESMEANSYESNY campaign attempts to reach all students, publishing brochures and information in a variety of languages. This help not only domestic students but also foreign students feel under the same identity.
With using the gender Neutral character in all of #YESMEANSYESNY's branding design, we try to bring the different genders under the same umbrella as well.
1. Chip, Heat, and Heat Dan. Switch, How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, n.d. p:153
