This event was on a Sunday and ran through most of the day. It intrigued me because I had recently worked on a project about raising awareness on opioids. The venue was at Civic Hall. It was my first time there. I was surprised because when I think ā€œcivic hallā€ I think of a grey building where only people in suits go, almost like DMV. However, the place was really nice. The walls and furniture were colorful. Overall, it was really modern.

After coming in, I walked over to someone to say I was there to be involved in the Hack the Opioid Crisis event. The person explained to me that there were groups that were formed based on their tasks and expertise. There were a group of computer programmers working on making an SMS message service; a group of strategists worked on gathering data; a group was working on branding and copy; another worked on a microsite. It felt like I was in an RPG video game and I had to choose a character based on my attributes. I decided to join the microsite team because they were working alongside the branding team. I was then given a name tag where I wrote my name, my pronoun and ā€œgraphic designerā€ in a bold script font. From there on, it was an intense session of designing and forming a campaign for dropping off prescribed opioids drugs.

 

MORE INFO ON THE EVENT FROM THE WEBSITE

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, in collaboration withĀ Civic HallĀ andĀ Progressive HackNight, presents “Hack the Opioid Crisis.” A full day of hacking dedicated to implementing and developing the technologies to alleviate the opioid crisis.

According to the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 6.4 million Americans suffer from drug abuse. The study shows that a majority of abused prescription drugs were obtained from family and friends, often from the home medicine cabinet.

TheĀ National Prescription Drug Take-Back DayĀ aims to provide a safe, convenient, and responsible means of disposing of prescription drugs, while also educating the general public about the potential for abuse of medications. OnĀ Hack the Opioid Crisis,Ā we will work on projects that will achieve the three key things that will move Take Back Day efforts forward: Lowering The Barrier, Outreach, Inform.

 

 

This is one of the sketches of the logos I made

They had me help them with some logo. These are some of the ones I worked on. There are definitely things to work on here. For example, the one on the right is going somewhere, but Iā€™d give the letters perspective to make it look right. Iā€™d also change the pill for a pill bottle and give it some color.

 

This is an idea for an illustration for social media for one of the posts. It is a drawing of dead fishes on top of the water and a fishnet filled with opioids pills. This shows what can happen when opioids dissolve on bodies of water.

This is some of the ideation we did.

This was the team I worked with for the Hack the Opioids Crisis event. At the end of the event, I exchanged business cards with all of them. Overall, it was really fun and challenging event. I came in without an idea of what the place might even look like and I ended up helping out to build up a campaign to avoid opioid overdose by getting prescribed opioid drugs out of peopleā€™s homes.

 

Update:

https://clearyourcabinet.ag.ny.gov/#top

They used my logo for the campaign and at the conference.