Ottawa Stray Cat Rescue is a non-profit animal rescue within the Ottawa valley, that required a campaign design to promote
their services and drive donations.
This project allowed me to develop my experience in campaign designs, which included, developing artwork, “Call to Actions” with intentions
of meeting specific goals, and developing branded advertisements to engage with a target audience.
Within this project, I focused on print and social media content, following my own research which identified a target audience.
So, let's start with research. A quick internet search of Ottawa Stray Cat rescue tells us a lot. The rescue, provides a lot of services in addition to just rehoming cats, is exclusively non-profit and volunteer funded, and the people there love cats.
There's no demographic limit to loving cats. While the rescue's social media skews to a slightly older demographic, I wanted this to appeal to a younger target audience that would undoubtedly have a soft spot for cats. (college students).
After researching, and establishing a target audience, I started the very labour-heavy task of sketching hundreds and hundreds of cats.
From this sketching process, I established a basic art style—involving focusing on basic shapes and maintaining movement—and established a clear focus on three services of the OSCATR, through the presentation of "mascots."
These mascots were cats, reflecting the services of; rehoming, providing medical services, and providing food and shelter to feral cats.
After doing all that cool sketching and research, it's time to move everything digitally. I'll typically start in procreate for sketching, and then move into Adobe Illustrator.
I had established I wanted this campaign to have both printed, and web/social media content, so I first started by using my sketches and the assets I had already collected to make some basic layouts of how I wanted everything to look.
I ended up falling in love with emulating paper-cutouts in Illustrator, and felt they were a great way to grab attention, portray depth, and create some movement in the pieces.
I also decided to keep a monochromatic colour palette for each "mascot," specifically so that there was a clear distinction between each mascot and what those pieces were highlighting.
Once my layouts were complete and how I liked them, and once I had developed an art style that I was happy with—I had to refine everything just a little bit more, to ensure readability, and that my intentions were coming through.
For refinements, I focused on editing the critiques I had gotten, which involved; using a wider range of colours in the monochromatic style, changing the leading of the CTA text, and changing the type choices for the body copy.
I spent the time to create additional content that would be suitable for a carousel post on instagram, and felt the content I created was ultimately successful in the purpose of engaging the target audience, educating, and driving donations to OSCATR.
