You can’t help but look at these and smile.
Which is odd, because they’re informational COVID-19 posters. You know the ones. “Wash your hands.” “Keep six feet of distance.” All typically conveyed in a clean, no-nonsense fashion. But with a range of splashy, high-contrast colors, asymmetrical layouts, and a bunch of googly-eyed, anthropomorphic monsters, this new poster series by the San Francisco-based interior design studio is the 2D equivalent of a warm hug.
The O+A posters pull directly from the advice of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (which has its own series of print resources, but they mostly rely on text and lists that are both easy to gloss over and difficult to understand at a glance). The O+A team wanted to spruce up the CDC’s advice to make it more casual, approachable, and fun, Vereker says. Instead of “Wearing a mask prevents the spread of the virus,” the posters read “Chin up. But Keep it Covered.”
“Our design brief was simple,” Vereker says. “It was to follow the messaging of the CDC, and create a sign that doesn’t look like a sign so that people will actually stop and take notice, want to read it, and want to post them.” Vereker says she doesn’t know exactly where they’ve been placed, but she has received messages from friends and former clients who have put them up in their neighborhoods. She hopes to see them in person once it’s safe to travel again. Until then, she hopes the posters make people smile in a year when it feels like there’s not much to smile about.