CHRIS JOHNSON
communications specialist
Where the phrase "riot of color" begins and ends.
THE EVENT PROGRAM
Mental Health Day at the Capitol is the one day of the year that can be guaranteed to move more people into the "clearly needs emotional support" queue of life. A day in which all the leading stakeholder mental health organizations descend upon the state Capitol with as many consumers of mental health services in tow as they can muster, typically between 700-1,000, is quite something to be a part of. The morning is spent inside a historic railway depot which is a lovely venue, and everyone has a great time because the acoustics are so atrocious most people give up listening and just chat with their friends (making the acoustics that much worse, of course).
The point to the day is that people who self-identify as living with a behavioral health concern meet with their legislators in the afternoon to discuss legislation they likely just learned about for the first time that morning.
This means that if the day is going to have any real impact at all, the guide will need to accomplish many things-first and foremost it has to be interesting-looking enough that people will pick one up, and engaging enough that they will hold onto it util they are standing in front of legislators and need to make reference to specific pieces of legislation.
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Georgia being... Georgia*, it is typical for the newly-educated advocates to know more about new mental health legislation than most legislators, who in all fairness do have about 1,892 arcane topics laws must be made for (socks, possums, carpet, refrigeration, wigs, taxidermy, etc.) so we cut them some slack, but it puts our advocates not only in the position of having to explain their position on the legislation, but frequently to explain the legislation itself.
The only real shortfall of the program as a resource for the day was that it did not contain the synopses of individual pieces of legislation considered vital by many, though not by me (which is why I did not include them). In the end though, it was the amount of time it took to put the program together that was its downfall. The design itself didn't take that much time, but building consensus around design elements and content in the very constrained circumstances that define the event proved to be too time consuming, and the BHSC reverted back to the much less colorful (but much more content-rich) program for the 2024.
My Favorite Thing (about this project)
Adding an advocate/protestor to the University of Georgia Arches (seen on the state seal) gave me great joy. As an English major from UGA, I walked through and around the Arch daily for years, and still do whenever I can. Having the opportunity to include the Arch--the three pillars of which represent tradition, superstition, and protest--in a design where its inclusion makes sense made me extraordinarily happy when designing it; hearing from people at the event about how much joy it gave them was an unexpected but great reward.
My (Second) Favorite Thing (about this project)
I like this data visualization of Georgia's population tables because it joins two of my favorite design elements--color and dots.
I discovered early on in the process that not having the dots exactly where they should be bothered lots of people who had connections to those places--so I left the map inexact, as it gave me the opportunity to engage with people who might not have otherwise wanted to have a conversation about community mental health when they would stop to correct my placement of their hometown.
