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Rowan Black 

BA [Hons] Visual Communication Design

My name is Rowan. As a budding designer, strong graphic elements are very much an integral part of my work, whether it’s printed image, digital design or motion graphics. I’m a humorous person and an illustrator at heart. I try to maintain an empathy for the end user, and find new ways 
to communicate the right tone and message in my process. Aside from that, custom typography is also a discipline I’ve more recently taken an interest in. I readily enjoy both collaborative and independent projects, and learning new ways of working and making things is a significant interest of mine, so I’d like to consider myself quite adaptable when 
it comes to choice of medium.

Lies have been sold to us for decades, and the ‘cult of the body’ mindset has only continued to become more mainstream with the rise of social media. Higher Health seeks to educate consumers on what ways this cult-mindset can take form within the wellness industry, such as through promotion of pseudoscience, worship of ambassador-figures, or using and advising unsafe practices to brand-followers, to name a few. This is done through case examples of cult-brands routinely added to Higher Health’s online site, ultimately helping people better-navigate similar brands for themselves.
There’s an endless amount of articles, videos, as well as podcasts documenting what these brands are truly like, but this means each piece of information regarding any specific aspect of the industry is too spread apart to be readily accessible. That’s why Higher Health offers a foundry for its sources, categorised by theme, media-type, and problem-similarities, so all data is made immediately available, on desktop and mobile.
It also provides readers the opportunity to share their own experiences with each other, through contacting Higher Health who then broadcasts that information on their site and social media. A lot of my earlier research consisted of these brands’ past-client and employee testimonials, and so considering the impact on mental health they can have on people, I really wanted to get that across in the project, and offer a space to share experiences to make these issues more well-known outside of just the news headlines.
The promotional matter would largely take form as posters. These would then be stuck up in hub-areas within a cityscape, so as to attract people while they're out, potentially close to some of these brands' nearby branches.
The posters would also be shown through projection-work, allowing Higher Health's advertising images to be made larger or smaller, for any building-side or even floor-space with ease.
Project Overview

Higher Health is an awareness campaign that highlights how mainstream wellness and fitness brands use inclusivity and motivational language to perpetuate a cult-mentality in consumers.

Higher Health will inform people on what brands are most important to watch out for, and thus allow them to make informed judgements for themselves on whether these brands and others that share similarities with them are trustworthy.


Invictus: Gender Politics and Representation in Contemporary Fragrance Advertising

This dissertation examines the sustained prevalence of using traditional gender-binary roles in order to advertise men’s fragrances, and what precisely encapsulates the ‘ideal’ man.

Visual Communication Design
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