Growth Haven
The community I researched and designed for is middle school students who are facing mental health issues regarding puberty. With middle school students going into their teenage years, their mind and views can vastly change and affect how they see themselves and others due to the exposure of media, friends, and family members. Mental health issues are what affects these middle schoolers the most as they become more aware of their environment and themselves. One major thing that every middle schooler goes through is puberty; a time when the body changes and creates a self awareness of oneself. Due to the mental health issues that can surround puberty, it can be hard for schools to connect with kids in a way that allows them to feel relatable and embrace it as a natural process. “The reliance on schools for the provision of puberty education also generated some unique challenges for educators, especially given the sensitivity of the content. In some cases, varying socio-cultural beliefs impacted views on puberty and menstruation, and educators indicated hesitancy in the possibility of contradicting information that adolescents received from home.” (Front Reprod Health) It is important that puberty is taught and embraced to promote body positivity for students to understand their changes are normal.
The name of my project is called Growth Haven. The initial thought process for this name was to create a safe space and promote the positivity of bodily changes towards students as they mature. The overall aesthetic for my brand is a neutral toned color palette with gender neutral character designs to depict a calm and welcoming mood towards middle school students to feel less pressured and less embarrassed by the topic of puberty. The character designs are genderless to allow the student to feel more related to the character regardless of the differences of what each gender goes through. There are at least three different body shapes with a different styled sprout on the top of their head to show the representation of various body types and hair. The sprout design was derived from the idea of picturing younger kids as plants.
My first product is an animation that shows the main character going through the process of puberty where they develop odd bumps over their body that they become self conscious of. Due to the obvious changes, other students pick on them and they get upset because of the experience. Another student who is also going through puberty oversees the upset character, approaches them with a flower ribbon to put on top of their bumps to represent the embracement of their changes where they become more accepting of themselves. At the end of the video, there will be a quote that tells students to embrace their changes as it is natural.
The second product will be a worksheet that will be a follow up of the animation, the worksheet will revolve around the idea of Mad Libs; a game where a story-line is given but only a few important words are left blank to change the story-lines’ mood. The idea is to create a story-line of a character noticing a difference within themselves but allowing the story-line to be changed in a way that can be more lighthearted and silly to allow students work in pairs to creatively change the story-line viewpoint.
The third product will be a t-shirt design that will consist of the logo and character design from the animation to be given out to students to wear as a way to represent the embracement and spreading positivity of puberty.