MPDC Crisis support
Awareness Campaign
Year 2020
Type agency
Role Designer
Crisis Support Is a group of faith-based first responders that function as a division of the Missoula Police Department. In times of trauma, grief, or stress, the Crisis Support chaplains serve as a comforting presence for both the general public and on-duty officers. While the service of Crisis Support is rooted in Christianity, the team offers its care to all persons regardless of faith, race, gender, sexual orientation, or any other defining characteristic.
However, due to a perceived Constitutional issue of separation of church and state, the Missoula Police Department is unable to offer compensation for the Crisis Support team. Despite their crucial importance and impact, Crisis Support is currently comprised of only two individuals, on call at all hours, entirely on a volunteer basis.
My ad agency, PartnersCreative, offered to work pro bono in conjunction with the Missoula Police Department to craft a brand identity, a website, and print collateral for Crisis Support. The goal of the campaign is to build awareness for the value of Crisis Support, and to collect donations and grant funding to ultimately compensate the chaplains for their service. I served as the lead graphic designer for the following work.
Logo
I concepted a number of logos that, to varying degrees, spoke to some of the main pillars of Crisis Support: trauma and recovery, spirituality, and law enforcement. Our team and the Crisis Support team selected this logo for a number of reasons, such as the “trustworthy” connotation of blue tones, the nod to police service through the badge-like shape, the comforting use of a sans serif typeface in sentence case, and the grasped arms serving as a direct symbolism of “support” that isn’t outwardly religious or spiritual.
Website
I worked with our web development team to select a WordPress template that fit seamlessly with the information and functionality we needed to convey Crisis Support’s message. The site spells out Crisis Support’s mission and explains the necessity of its specific services, features biographies of the chaplains, and allows visitors to donate and have their names appear among those of other contributors.
The content is logically sectioned off into a number of gray background tones, and a number of the charts, icons, and text blocks in these sections animate as the user scrolls. These dominant gray tones contrast strongly with tasteful highlights of light and dark blue sampled from the logo. The logo’s typeface is also carried over into the site’s headings, and the image selections center around common Missoula landmarks and themes of comfort and tranquility. The site’s information tells the Crisis Support story in a format that, hopefully, encourages visitors to donate to its chaplains.
Brochure
After building the website, I was tasked with creating a three-panel brochure to communicate largely the same content. The key design challenge presented by this task was to take the same layout, color, imagery, and typography principles from the website, and apply them to the brochure’s layout in a manner that makes both pieces feel cohesive. The reader can mail in the brochure with their donation in the same manner they could donate on the website.