Road safety campaign award for Swinburne student Chloë Young
In Summary
- Communication design student wins road safety campaign competition
- Chloë Young addressed the issue of mobile phone use while driving
- As part of her award, Ms Young will activate the campaign at Swinburne's Hawthorn campus
An innovative approach to tackling the issue of mobile phone use while driving has seen Swinburne student Chloë Young win a road safety competition.
Communication Design (Honours) student Ms Young used a highly emotive video in an inaugural competition run by RACV, Transurban, TAC and the National Radio Safety Partnership Program.
Young drivers are overrepresented in road fatalities and research suggests mobile phone use while driving reflects a larger issue – mobile phone addiction.
The competition challenged Swinburne Communication Design students to develop a creative execution that generated awareness about the issue and influenced behaviour among their peer age group.
Ms Young says the idea for her campaign came after she conducted research with her peers.
“Through my research it became clear that it’s a matter of smartphone addiction. I didn’t feel many existing campaigns, both locally and overseas, addressed this. They focused more on the consequences of irresponsible driving and were essentially telling people off,” Ms Young says.
“I wanted to change the conversation to say ‘hey, if we get off our phones when we don’t need them, what new experiences are we going to become a part of? Let’s not miss our journey, and just live the moment!’”
Ms Young has won funding to activate her idea at Swinburne’s Hawthorn campus during Semester 2, as well as a one-month paid internship at Hard Edge, a branding communications agency.
“It’s a little early to say at the moment, but a poster series is definitely something I would like to roll out across campus. The idea relies on a video that encapsulates the ‘live the moment’ concept which will be accessible online, and I have ideas for an edit that could go on the screens available throughout the AMDC and other buildings.”
Ms Young hopes the internship will help prepare her for life after university.
“I'm looking forward to collaborating with the team at Hard Edge and getting stuck into some design work. The industry can seem like a big bad world sometimes so this will be a great opportunity to experience what it has to offer before graduating.”
The project was undertaken as part of the DDD40014 Advanced Industry Projects unit, offered within Swinburne’s Bachelor of Design (Communication Design) (Honours) program.