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Assignment 9: Take a Stand

This assignment is completely self-directed. Therefore, you will be writing your own brief and working through a unique personal project. 

For this assignment you are expected to:

• Clearly articulate the boundaries of the project, including the theme or subject of the work, the form of the deliverables, the target audience, and the client. Stick with the boundaries you establish.

• Convey a position or opinion on a topic to incite action. This can be for a social cause, it can be promotional advertising or political propaganda. Your project should stir up a response from the audience. 

The subject you will be working with and the form of the deliverables is completely up to you. The following are some examples that can serve as inspiration:

• Call for Change: Advertising campaign for a social justice cause. Raise awareness of an important topical social issue. You could design posters on the theme of education, health, crime or politics.

• Recruitment: Promote a profession that needs more workers, volunteers, or apprentices. Encourage young people to join by designing a pamphlet that will be distributed through a university or career centre.

• Subscription: Create digital assets that will be shared on social media, email, and digital platforms to encourage people to subscribe to a sustainable coffee and chocolate delivery service. 

Identify what the key aims and objectives are. For instance, what is the call to action once someone encounters the work? How will people engage with the brand/product/cause? What considerations might you need to address, when viewing work on a smartphone? How might you animate a brand logotype? Would a design work better with a level of interactivity? Can you add further meaning to a piece by using different materials or processes?

Once you have established the project and set the brief’s objectives, develop ideas and iterations in your sketchbook and document your process in your learning log. 

Finally, Presentation needs to reflect professional practice. Although you might not have access to professional production facilities you can still present your work in a professional manner. Consider how the work will be presented in your portfolio.

Mind mapping

Potential issues:

I chose fast fashion as my subject because it’s something that affects all of us, often without us realising it. The way clothes are made and sold today has a huge impact on the environment and on the people who make them, many of whom work in unfair or unsafe conditions. I wanted to explore this topic to better understand the hidden costs behind the clothes we wear and to highlight why it’s important to think more carefully about how and what we consume. It’s a subject that really connects everyday choices with bigger global issues, which is why I felt it was worth focusing on.

Fast Fashion title:

Brief

Stand for Sustainable Fashion is a campaign aimed at raising awareness about the environmental and ethical impacts of fast fashion, encouraging young consumers (ages 18–30) to rethink their fashion choices and embrace more sustainable habits. The project will deliver a series of posters and social media assets designed to provoke thought and inspire action: buy less, choose better, and spread the message using #WearYourValues. The goal is to educate, incite conversation, and drive audiences to resources on ethical brands and conscious consumption, ultimately building a movement that values people and planet over disposable trends.

Research: Fast Fashion

What Is Fast Fashion?

Brands like Zara, H&M, Shein, and Primark rapidly produce cheap, trending clothing by quickly translating catwalk styles into store-ready designs within weeks, maintaining high consumer demand through constant newness. This business model fosters a disposable mindset among consumers, who, enticed by low prices, often buy garments frequently and discard them after only a few wears (Washington Post, 2025).

Environmental & Social Impacts

The fast fashion industry has a significant environmental and human impact, accounting for roughly 10% of global CO₂ emissions, more than all international flights and shipping combined. It uses approximately 93 billion m³ of water annually and contributes around 20% of global industrial wastewater, with dye runoff polluting rivers. Washing synthetic fabrics releases microfibres into the ocean, making up about 35% of marine microplastics. Each year, 85–92 million tonnes of textile waste end up in landfills or are incinerated, while synthetic garments do not biodegrade. Additionally, many garments are produced in low-wage factories under poor labour conditions, where workers, predominantly women, may face exploitation and unsafe environments (Earth.org, 2025).

Why It’s Still Booming

Low prices and rapid turnover in fast fashion fuel consumer addiction to constantly changing styles, driving the market’s continued growth, which is currently valued at around $150 billion and projected to nearly double by 2032. Despite growing concerns over sustainability, some brands engage in greenwashing, promoting eco-friendly messages while continuing volume-driven practices that remain harmful to the environment (Financial Times, 2025).

Signs of Change

Policy actions are emerging globally, with Chile enacting new laws targeting fast fashion waste in the Atacama Desert, while France and the EU are introducing bans, levies, and extended producer responsibility measures. Brands such as H&M, Zara, and Primark are launching recycling, durability programmes, and resale services, although critics caution against potential greenwashing. Meanwhile, consumers are increasingly embracing circular fashion, focused on reusing, repairing, and recycling, and demanding greater transparency and ethical production. In the US, the Government Accountability Office has highlighted the issue of massive textile waste and proposed federal recycling strategies (The Guardian, 2025).

What You Can Do

Consumers can help address the impacts of fast fashion by buying less and choosing well, prioritising quality over quantity and supporting second-hand or sustainable labels. Extending the life of garments through proper care and repairs also makes a significant difference. It is important to educate oneself about a brand’s true environmental and labour practices, and to support policies and legislation that hold producers accountable for their social and environmental impacts (Earth.org, 2025).

Fast fashion’s model of high volume and low cost comes at steep environmental and social prices, but growing awareness, policy measures, and innovations in circular fashion hint at a possible shift towards sustainability (Vogue Business, 2025).

Pinterest board: Fast Fashion

Pinterest, 2025

Inspirations

Google images, 2025
Pinterest, 2025

Thumbnails

Sketches: 3 Posters

Typeface

Sans-serif Fonts (Modern, Clean, Bold)

  • Helvetica Bold
    Universally respected, clean, and professional.
    Used by government and corporate branding.
  • Futura Bold
    Geometric, sharp, and very direct.
    Feels assertive without being aggressive.
  • Impact
    Extremely bold, grabs attention.
    Good for headlines or short, punchy messages.
  • Franklin Gothic Heavy
    Serious and authoritative.
    Often used in news and official publications.
  • Montserrat ExtraBold
    Modern and strong with a tech edge.
    Great for bold statements in digital formats.

I chose Impact because it’s bold and gets straight to the point. To me, it looks strong and serious, like it means business. I didn’t want something soft or decorative; I wanted a font that stands out and makes people pay attention. Impact does that. It’s simple, clear, and powerful, just like the message I’m trying to share.

Design process

Colour palette

When choosing the colours for this campaign, I wanted something that would instantly grab attention but also carry meaning. I started with a simple black and white foundation—clean, bold, and timeless. This high contrast not only helps the text stand out clearly in both print and digital formats, but it also brings a sense of urgency and seriousness to the work. It felt like the right base to let the message speak loudly without distraction.

To give each poster its own personality and emotional focus, I introduced a different primary colour—red, yellow, or blue—as an accent. These choices weren’t just about making things look good; they were about what each colour says:

Red felt right for themes around exploitation, it’s intense, emotional, and demands attention. Yellow adds a warning tone, but it also carries hope, perfect for environmental messages that need both urgency and optimism. Blue brings a sense of trust and calm, especially when talking about solutions and better choices.

By giving each poster its own accent colour, I was able to keep the series visually consistent while allowing each piece to stand on its own. It’s a simple palette but it works hard, and that’s exactly what I wanted.

Final designs

For this social media post, I intentionally chose to work with text only to deliver the message with maximum clarity and impact. In a feed full of busy images and distractions, a bold typographic design demands attention and creates a natural pause point for the viewer. The use of all-caps, clean sans-serif typography gives the message urgency and weight, mirroring the seriousness of the issue at hand: the impact of fast fashion.

I built this design on a black background to create a high-contrast foundation that’s visually striking on both light and dark mode screens. The primary colours—yellow, red, and blue—are used purposefully:

Yellow (for “SUSTAINABLE”) communicates optimism, hope, and the promise of change. Red (for “FASHION”) evokes urgency and signals the danger and human cost behind the fashion industry. Blue (for “SPREAD THE WORD” and the hashtag) conveys trust, community and a sense of action toward better choices.

These colours are also timeless, recognisable, and emotionally resonant, making the post not only bold but deeply symbolic.

Mock-ups

Self-reflection

Working on this project has been an eye-opening and one of the interesting experiences I’ve had. From the start, I knew I wanted to tackle something that mattered not just on a global level, but also on a personal one: fast fashion. Over the years, I’ve seen how quickly clothing has shifted from something we value and care for into something disposable. That change really stuck with me, and I wanted to create a campaign that challenged that mindset.

I created a series of posters and social media pieces under the title “Stand for Sustainable Fashion.” My goal wasn’t just to inform people but to make them feel something, to stop scrolling, pay attention and reflect. Some of the designs are text-led on purpose. I wanted the message to be unmissable, loud and clear, especially on platforms where we’re bombarded with visuals. Strong typography paired with a black background and bold primary colours (red, yellow, blue) helped keep everything consistent, powerful, and easy to read at a glance.

For the illustrated posters, I tried to strike a balance between simplicity and symbolism. The “True Cost” design uses a price tag not to show money but to show the real cost: water, labour, and lack of fair wages. “Not Disposable” brings attention to how fashion waste builds up, and “Fashion’s Footprint” uses the melting Earth to show how global this issue really is. I added texture to the accent colours to give them a worn, gritty feel, something that subtly suggests overuse or decay.

One of the trickiest parts was figuring out how to tie everything together while still letting each piece speak for itself. Assigning one primary colour to each design helped create a strong visual identity without making them feel repetitive. I also thought a lot about how they’d perform on digital platforms, making sure fonts were legible on small screens and that the hashtag #WearYourValues was short, memorable, and easy to engage with.

In the end, I’m proud of what I created. The designs feel bold, meaningful, and cohesive but more than that, the project pushed me to think about how design can actually start conversations and shift perspectives. It reminded me that even small visual choices, like a typeface, a colour or a phrase can make a big impact when used with purpose.

Resources

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