Digital Design students promote mental health support in university wide campaign 

Digital Design students have a developed a campaign in collaboration with the GCU Wellbeing Service to encourage students to speak about their mental health .

As part of their Design For Change module, final year BSc (Hons) Digital Design students Yvonne Kerr, Dylan Higgins, Charlie Burns-Sweeney and David Beacham were tasked to work on a campaign to encourage students to access mental health support from the GCU Wellbeing Service.

The project, titled ‘GCUGood?’, saw the team work with GCU Mental Health and Wellbeing Manager Katie Miller-Cole on a one-to-one basis, meeting regularly to discuss the brief and make any changes based on feedback.

Now completed, the campaign will be shared across campus as part of University Mental Health Day; an annual day on March 14 which is designed to encourage students to speak about their mental health.

The students created a series of poster designs, motion graphic and social media assets which will be shared as part of the day.

“Mental health issues are obviously something that everyone deals with and usually in silence, so we all thought that it was a really good opportunity to create a project around that issue.” Explained final year student David Beacham.

He added: “It felt easier being able to get into the mindset of the target audience, since they were students and that’s of course what we are as well.

Sometimes, we would discuss an idea and think ‘No, I don’t think a student would respond to that’ and think about what we would describe as eye catching.’”

Final year student Charlie Burns-Sweeney enjoyed the chance to work directly with Katie as part of the process. He said: “Once the brief was given, we came up with how to tackle the issue and from there we split up the tasks between the group.

Each time we met with Katie, it meant we had more feedback to work with and that’s more than you would get from a brief on a piece of paper.”

Unlike other briefs, final year Dylan Higgins felt that the experience allowed them to develop a better insight into what the client wanted. He explained: “It felt like a real project because we were able to interact with the client; in this case Katie from the GCU Wellbeing Team. It meant that we had the chance to ask more in-depth questions.”

As well as developing client relationship building, the project allowed students to enhance skills that they have learned throughout the course. David explained: “I really enjoyed the motion graphic side to the project and getting the chance to try out character design. It had it’s challenges, but was really fun. We get to learn about motion graphics in our third year, but this experience really showed me how much is involved.”

He added: “It’ll be a strange feeling seeing it around campus, especially seeing it from the perspective of the target audience – which is us! It’s one thing designing it on a small screen but seeing it on posters around campus will be a cool experience. It makes you feel like you’ve really achieved something.”

Find out more about accessing wellbeing support at GCU on the Student Wellbeing Service webpage

By Rachael McAlonan

Got a SCEBE or GSBS story? Email me at Rachael.McAlonan@gcu.ac.uk or connect with me on social media