ABOUT

The United Nations’ global call out to creatives, announced in March 2020, aimed to encourage the creation of projects that delivered intriguing messages and raised awareness to help stop the spread of COVID-19. While trying to figure out what to do as a response to the open call, I wanted to channel my new-found daily routines and provide a story that contained a personal touch.

Throughout the tough and uncertain times imposed by the global pandemic, some of us were lucky enough to keep working from their homes. As one of those lucky individuals, I wanted to make people smile by illustrating one of our daily 'struggles' in these hard times. I adapted Joseph Campbell’s famous 'Hero’s Journey' narrative to our current situation, telling the story of an individual performing the 'heroic' act of going to the market and coming back home.

This illustration required research and copywriting, as well as an overall understanding of the Hero’s Journey narrative, in addition to a strong sense of visual composition. The biggest challenge was to come up with separate captions and making them legible in a single image, while keeping the relatively light tone without straying off of the actual purpose, which was to relay a message about the pandemic. I did the drawing entirely on Photoshop, using brighter colors and different brushes, recalling the style of comics.

Following the open call, these illustration was featured on the project website. Since this open call was a collaboration between the UN and Talenthouse, the featured illustrations were shared with the audience of both organizations. Being acknowledged by Talenthouse (90,1K followers on Instagram), was particularly noteworthy in terms of reaching out to a global creative community. The work was also featured in BantMag, the biggest online publication for popular culture in Turkey, and received 1,097 likes on Instagram.