PROJECT: PERINATAL PEER SUPPORT PRINCIPLES
CLIENT: MATERNAL MENTAL HEALTH ALLIANCE (MMHA)

The Maternal Mental Health Alliance (MMHA) is a coalition of over 90 national member organisations, lived experience champions and clinicians, working collaboratively to improve perinatal mental health care for women and families in the UK.

OBJECTIVE

To create a set of 5 illustrations and a poster design which would help the MMHA promote and bring to life the Perinatal Peer Support Principles, a set of guiding values for organisations providing peer support to women during pregnancy and postnatally.

The poster brings together the full set of illustrations to summarise the 5 principles in a clear and visually interesting way, but the illustrations are also to be used individually in a longer form document and on social media.

The full principles and long form document can be viewed in full/downloaded on the MMHA website here

This project was quite a long running one, as the client (very sensibly) had factored in a good amount of time for gathering feedback at set stages from the various stakeholders and others involved in developing the principles. It was important to get everyone invested in the project on board with the design and that all the illustrations were conveying exactly the right message. An added directive was to try to include colours from the brand palettes of the different contributing organisations.

I showed initial sketches for the individual illustrations and how I proposed they would sit in the over-arching poster layout. There was then a few rounds of adapting the concepts for a couple of the sketches before final agreement. I worked up the approved illustrations and the overall layout, with the last ‘tricky one to get right’ still in sketch stage, so that it could be viewed in context - this helped in being able to show how the final artwork would look in terms of illustration style and colour palette.

CLIENT PERSPECTIVE

Throughout this project with my main point of contact was Amy Tubb, who is the Communications Officer for MMHA. Following completion of the project Amy kindly answered some questions relating to the process of working with me and the finished work, here’s what she had to say…

Did you look at other illustrators who may have been able to deliver this work - If so, why did you decide to work with Carys?

We contacted three illustrators and looked at several more but chose Carys because of her enthusiasm for the project, impressive body of work and professionalism – from her initial artwork examples to our scoping conversation.

How did you find the process… from the initial briefing through to the completion of your project, are there any areas that could be improved?

Honestly, Carys was a pleasure to work with from start to finish. Her expertise and artistry were so apparent, and she really helped to guide us through the process. There were an awful lot of stakeholders to satisfy for this project and Carys remained patient but firm throughout, always offering something original and well thought through.

We were looking to bring something flat to life, to make the principles warm and accessible but also authoritative and not undermine their importance; Carys absolutely nailed that brief!

Are you happy with the final artwork, and how has it been received by others?

The whole project team is delighted with the final artwork, including the funder, organisations that led the development and the lived experience volunteers. We couldn’t be more excited to share the illustrations with our members and supporters.

Anything else you’d like to add?

I’d just like to extend a huge thank you to Carys for giving the Principles such a strong visual identity and for making our job of publicising them so much easier. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend her!

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