Making a Run:

WICWC Hero Run /
WICWC Course des Héros

Raising money for cancer care, the non-profit decided to hold a running event where runners bring in money from donors they solicited to sponsor their participation in the event. More, runners were to don the regalia of their favourite heroes for the entirety of their runs. As it were, they desired to call the event the "Hero Run" / "Course des Héros" — the Quebec-based event was bilingual, requiring bilingual materials that were equally as effective in French as in English. Additionally, the non-profit also preferred that the event branding felt more like a 'real marathon'; that is, to feel more prestigious than local charity runs/ 'runs for the cure' often tended to feel.

Keeping that in mind, I decided to utilize bold typography, but with colours that I surveyed to be common to marathons/ marathon shoe colourways and iconic comic books that I had. From there, I designed a caped marathoner figure that I incorporated into the typography. As the french logotype required an accent, I incorporated the accent into the 'R' so that it felt like the 'R' is itself running — constraining conditions make for the best conditions for creativity.

In this case, event posters were a major part of the campaigning effort to bring in more people. In my research, people are more concerned with / likely to donate to cancer care for children. As the non-profit also always provided cancer care for children, I decided that the poster hero really had to be a child — yes; indeed, a literal poster child.

I noticed that most designers usually have runners running toward the viewer, but I believe they should be running away from the viewer and 'into' the poster/ poster's horizon lines to make the viewer feel as if they are being coaxed into the poster to follow our hero into whatever battles they are going to be battling. I was also called to write the copy for the poster to let the text on the poster pack as much of a punch as the graphics already did here. The poster coordinated the rest of the event branding for different materials and media, and people were responding positively — so much so that the non-profit decided to make it an annual event to keep raising money for cancer care.