Tools Used: Figma, InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop
GOAL
Building a cohesive brand that targets young Canadians navigating economic precarity while balancing satirical humour and respecting the people living in it.
CONSTRAINTS
Tone had to balance satire with decorum.
Campaign needed to work across distinct mediums including: posters, newsletters, and website.
Creating a coherent semiotic strategy, employing: ethos, pathos, and logos.
DELIVERABLES
Event poster for The Circus at SAMU promoting a live financial literacy event.
Email newsletter.
Website mockup.
WHERE WE STARTED
Young Canadians are financially stretched and nobody's talking about it in a way that lands. I researched the landscape and built a strategic foundation before touching any of the designs.
Background Research
What it Revealed: Statistical research into gig economy growth, student debt, wage stagnation, and financial literacy gaps among young Canadians revealed that problems are systemic but existing resources feel cold and institutional.
Semiotics Research
What it Revealed: Mapping how the campaign would communicate and figuring out how to balance satirical tone with genuine respect for the audience revealed parallels between young people navigating finances and an unpredictable, overwhelming, and edgy brand.
Rhetoric Analysis
What it Revealed: Exploring ethos, pathos, and logos alongside rhetorical devices like irony, hyperbole, and metaphor to craft messaging that worked led me to understand that pathos needed to anchor everything. Humor only lands if the audience feels seen first.
Visual Direction
What it Revealed: Exploring visual references across carnival aesthetics and satirical brand campaigns showed how dark backgrounds, warm circus colors, and bold sans-serif typefaces created the right tension between playfulness and weight.
WHAT IT MEANT
Synthesis & exploration centred around three things research made clear:
AUDIENCE
Financial precarity isn't a niche issue. The campaign's job wasn't to convince people the problem exists, but to meet an audience where they are.
TONE
Satire without empathy is just mockery. The research made clear that humor could only work as a mid-point. People need to be heard early, and the design needed to make a point after the laugh.
METAPHOR
A circus isn't just chaotic, it's a system that presents chaos as entertainment. That distinction mattered, as Broke & Joking wasn't poking fun at financial struggle but the structures that produce it.
A NEW BRAND
Broke & Joking needed a visual identity informed by the research. I built a dark, circus-inspired brand system that could hold both humor and sincerity at once. Every decision from the carnival palette, to the bold sans-serif typeface was grounded in the central rhetoric tension between a serious subject and irreverent delivery.
AN ORIENTED CAMPAIGN
The brand needed to work across both digital and analog mediums including: posters, a newsletter, and a website. Each medium had its own design requirements and audience context. Rather than forcing identical aesthetics across all three, each piece was designed to shine in its own way.
A CENTRAL HUB
The website serves as the campaign's anchor and a funnel that brings the humor of the community into one place with clear calls to action, and a layout that made it easy to find events, resources, and ways to get involved.
NEXT STEPS
A few things I would push further if I had more time…
INVOLVED STRATEGY
Further mapping the deliverables to a larger-scale rollout and examining a campaign timeline would help coordinate and validate how newsletters and posters drive attendance to the event.
SEO STRATEGY
The site is live but discovery is largely word-of-mouth. A structured SEO strategy would help prospective students find the course organically rather than relying solely on Rotman's referral network.
MEASURING IMPACT
Building any online community requires defined metrics and a way to track them, otherwise there's no way to know to what extent it worked. I'd like to establish success indicators.
