Self-harm Awareness Poster concepts/sketches

This week's assignment was to come up with concepts for an awareness poster.  Given events close to home over the last year, I chose the topic of self-harm and how if not recognized as such, it can lead to suicide.

**********************************WARNING*************************************

The below concepts are provocative and could be triggering to those who have either experienced these types of events or currently self-harm.  
If you engage in self-harm, please seek help immediately!!

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Before we get into the concepts, I would first like to share a photo that I ran across earlier in the week, and which, along with personal experiences, helped inspire me to choose this topic.

Credit: Jamari Fox (http://insidejamarifox.com/choke-me-slap-me-pull-my-hair-the-bully-life/)

As you can see in the above image, the artist does a great job of tying together the source of depression (bullying/name calling) along with the effects of this behavior (self-harm).  I hope to do the same with my concepts and also with the final project once completed.

Ok - now on with the concepts....

Concept 1:

In this concept, I am portraying a girl who has been self-harming, through the use of a razor blade on her thighs.  When this type of behavior goes unaddressed and help is not provided, self-harm can lead to suicide attempts as depicted by the pill bottle.  As you know, there are many ways that suicide can be attempted, however, pill overdoses seem to be a prevalent mechanism that is used.  The tombstone reflects the unfortunate results of a successful suicide attempt - death.

Concept 2:

In this concept, the first image again shows someone who has been self-harming through "cutting".  This version is more provocative by showing a direct correlation between this and suicide.  While not always true - especially if help is sought - I have found that many awareness posters leverage this type of correlation to draw extra attention to an issue.

Concept 3:

Shifting the message a bit, in this concept I show the causation between bullying and suicide.  Many children who experience bullying become depressed, which can lead to suicide.  If we ban together and stop the bullying, we could out a huge dent in the number of youth suicides.

Concept 4:

In this concept, there are quite a few subtle nuances that I like and as such, I am building my concept around this one.  On the left, it shows a girl who has cuts on her thighs.  Above her is a white rose covered in blood and to the right of that, a knife.  In the top right, there is an open pill bottle which lead to the suicide note and eventual interment represented by the tombstone after a successful suicide attempt.  Had someone recognized the signs of self harm and sought help for this individual during the first stage, it is quite probable that the results would have been significantly different.

Concept 5:

In this concept, I chose to do something similar to an infographic, presenting statistics associated with bullying and suicide attempts.

Concept 6:

Concept 6 would have been very provocative if pursued.  In this concept, it shows a young child (7th grade based on the graduation year) who has just pulled the trigger on a handgun pointed towards his head.  The bullet has the word Bullying on it, which allows the viewer to conclude that bullying was the cause of this child's desire to kill themselves.  The text at the bottom makes a very clear statement that Bullying = Death.

Tune in next time, when I'll be providing you with the final version of Concept 4.  I have already started working on it, so you shouldn't have to wait long!