Home > Family Children Services Campaign
Family Children Services Campaign
Date:
November 2025 - Present
Client:
Santa Cruz County Family Children Services
Audience:
Caregivers and Mandated Reporters in the Santa Cruz Area
Starting in 2025, the Santa Cruz Family Children Services began an initiative to switch from "mandated reporting to community supporting," implementing the "Santa Cruz County Child Youth and Family Well-Being Partners" to do so. They hired my company to help them implement this more community-centered approach. My coworkers worked on the messaging and copywriting while my co-designer and I handled the creative. Since this initiative focuses on intervening in potential crisis situations early, our work centered around creating outreach materials to direct folks to community resources first and away from more serious reports until a situation requires it.
This campaign began with a new logo for the partnership, which my co-designer developed. From there, I began designing digital and print collateral items for their outreach efforts - these required a look and feel riffing off of the logo design.
These designs started with a fridge magnet, listing "Quick Calming Tips" for parents and caregivers. Fonts and colors for these materials adhere to the overarching Santa Cruz County brand guide, to create a continuity and credibility in context with other county department materials. To create a playful feel, I utilized soft, organic bubble shapes to encapsulate each tip on the magnet. I also developed each item to have a distinct Spanish version, using slightly different colors where applicable to make a visual difference at a glance.
My client absolutely loved this colorful look, so I translated this organic design to the other materials as well, creating some display banners for tabling events, followed by informational handouts, flyers, and a brochure. The goal was to make this information approachable and friendly, making the heavy topic of mandated reporting for children not so scary.
We topped off this handout work with a sticker for the client to give out as a fun swag item. I continued with the colorful organic shapes, iterating out to two additional, more text-based designs for the client to choose from. The client loved all three designs I had developed, so we opted to produce all three for them so visitors they engaged with would have a variety to enjoy.
Following the handout and swag production, the client also requested a set of large display boards that they could easily transport and disassemble/reassemble for different presentations and tabling events, tracking a timeline of child welfare reform legislation passed since the 2000s. This item was unique in that it had both very specific logistical needs and needed to be a "living" item that the client could continue adding onto as years pass and more legislation goes into effect.
I worked with a local print shop to discuss ideal materials and display methods, arriving on a light-weight 3x4 foot Falconboard design with die-cut Falconboard feet that could be easily taken apart and reassembled in a line on-site. I then created a tiled design with a multicolored timeline in the center that connects each board, arranging all legislation to-date and producing the final print with our vendor. To ensure that the client was able to continue adding to this over time, I also created a matching board template in Canva for them to access, already prepped with the appropriate tiling design and space for the die cut legs.
Lastly, I produced two animations directed at caregivers and mandated reporters respectively. These videos are meant to be used as trainings and orientations for these audiences, to educate them on different courses of action available to them for families and children in need.
After getting pitched the idea for these videos, I jumped right into the creative. I designed the bears, referencing cartoon bears like the original design of Winnie the Pooh, to create a friendly, approachable, and relatable family that could represent a number of different family structures. I followed this up by storyboarding the scripts that my team produced, securing the voice over for each video, and animating them all together into the final products.
