Business / Organizational Rhetoric
Create A Company
For this project, a small group and I were tasked with designing the foundation of a company or organization with the goal of using our understanding of language and design rhetoric to reach a desired audience.
My group and I chose to create a mental health support organization called "Mind Yourself." The purpose of our campaign was centered around the company's Instagram account and different deliverables that represent their knowledge and support for those struggling with mental health issues. This includes educating the audience on diverse areas of social justice and mental health, as well as representing different identities in the deliverables that we post. In fact, we put our mission statement in the account bio: “Dedicated to spreading awareness on mental health and social justice issues to ensure everyone’s voice is heard and valued.”
The audience were young people, who might be more likely to struggle with mental health and could benefit from more accurate representation, so we chose to use social media, where we could reach a huge audience in a way that is meaningful. We especially targeted two different groups: young people that don’t often see their identities considered in the mainstream mental health and self-care movements, and young people that do feel represented but want to educate themselves on how to support the mental health of the people around them, like people of color or LGBTQ people who are often left out of these conversations.
Deliverables
In making our deliverables, it was also important to understand the context of modern-day social media, where we could easily address as many people as possible in a short amount of time. We had to make different types of deliverables to serve different purposes, and adapt each one to be eye-catching and easy to read, so that it would appeal to a younger audience on Instagram specifically. We made a logo and mission statement for our Instagram page, to immediately present the purpose of the account, and we also made both posts and stories, so that we could address diversity in mental health in young people from a couple of different approaches. We have two types of stories: social justice and mental health reminders, and two posts that address a different under-represented community. We have one that addresses the Asian-American community, and one that gives success tips for students on the autism spectrum.
We also chose a few main strategies that we thought about when designing each deliverable, to make sure that each was the most effective in context while still part of a cohesive whole. First, we decided to use light, pastel colors. Not only do they fit the popular aesthetic on Instagram and appeal to younger generations in general, they also make the topics that we are addressing seem lighter and easier to deal with. We chose certain fonts for a similar reason. On all of our deliverables we use simple fonts that fit the aesthetic while still being easy to read. We also had to consider length. Since our deliverables are on Instagram, they probably won’t be looked at very long, so the stories have short sentences that get the point across quickly, and the posts are more likely to be read, so they give more information but still break it up into short sections or different slides that hold the reader’s attention. We also use images on the stories, which are eye-catching and stand out more, since they usually need to be clicked on for the audience to view them. On the posts, which normally show up on your feed automatically, we use illustrations, which are simpler, fit the overall theme of the posts, and allow the audience to focus more on the words. All of these elements together are effective in creating a popular aesthetic that makes social media users want to click on our deliverables, allowing us to address sensitive and heavy topics in a way that is lighter and easy to understand, while still leaving room to adapt each deliverable so that it will be the most effective in context.