Mankind Cooperative

A cannabis dispensary in San Diego wanted to reach out to veterans and offer a different path to living with less pain and hardship as opposed to the deadly opioid epidemic we’ve been experiencing. This was set to run during Veterans day 2017 and to be printed as the first Marijuana advertisement that would be published in the American Legion Veterans Day national issue.

Client Request

The company wanted to have something to specifically target veterans of the military while coinciding with Veterans Day taking place shortly thereafter. They also wanted to find a veteran who was a designer to create the advertisement. Eventually, the ad would run in the American Legion’s Veterans Day national issue in print, and also ran locally in the San Diego Reader magazine.

Proposal

Seeing the concept pretty clear, I wanted to literally spell out the message of HELP! Too often people succumb to other addictive and detrimental habits. The stigma around asking or seeking help is at times harder to bear than actually treating the issues

Execution

I set out to create a scene that used pills and alcohol as a backdrop, with them being the consistent go-to for drowning one’s sorrow and pain. I used the pills to spell out “Help” using the pill containers left open and scattered. While also utilizing the glass full of liquor to act as an exclamation point. I set up the scene and also photographed the images.

Tools

Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, digital photography, and set design were used in creating this. Created in 2017