#Save
Your
Skin

skin cancer awareness campaign

The purpose of this brief is to update a campaign that could use the helping hand of a graphic designer to communicate their campaign more effectively. I decided to choose the Skin Cancer Foundation’s “#ShareTheFacts” campaign that was made to raise awareness about skin cancer. I decided that this campaign was worthy of improving for several reasons: 

1. It’s a vital message that deserves to be broadcast more. While people are much more aware of about the dangers of skin cancer now than 20 years ago, there is a lot of misinformation and lack of awareness that needs to be addressed.

2. The  motto of their campaign, “#ShareTheFacts,” is too generic and frankly a little boring.

A simple stripped down color scheme, just black and white and a pure, almost toxic yellow, are utilized to focus on the message about the cancer-causing effects of the sun. The photos balance this dire message by representing candid, care-free summer vibes, while still supporting the important message. After all the point of the campaign is to get people to proactively “save their skin,” but not turn them off so much that the message is ignored.  

Simple graphic elements liven up the composition and reference the sun—circles and tapered lines that resemble abstracted sun beams.

All of the photos I sourced come from the public domain, most from the US’ Library of Congress’ incredible, and under-utilized, archive. I intentionally chose candid shots to show represent the subjects as real people, which I think is important for a campaign that is made to encourage people to change their behavior.
I wanted the subject photos to have a nostalgic 1950s-esque “Leave it to Beaver” quality, showing people enjoying their time in the sun without thinking about the consequences of it. To me, it harkens back to a time, without putting blame on them, when people were ignorant about major issues that we know are bad today, such as smoking. I remember when I was a kid my step-grandma (who could have been in one of these photos) told me that when she was young her and her friends spent the summer sun-bathing at the beach because they had no idea how much it would damage their skin in later years. She told me this to warn me not to be foolish and do the same. (I listened to her advice.)

I also wanted to emphasize children in the campaign since that is where the most significant prevention can take place. Futhermore, it is a message to the elders of children that it is their responsibility to ensure that they young loved ones are safe from the sun until they are old enough to take on that responsibility themselves. After all, the cancer-causing damage starts at the first sun burn and having just five or more sunburns doubles your chances of melanoma. Kids don’t know or care what melanoma is, so it is the responsibility of their caretakers to do it for them. This campaign hopefully will encourage people to especially check out the website, which is fully of helpful resources and information, without being too judgy or preachy, and still encourage people to responsibly enjoy the summer sun.