Burnout - Rationale

The millennial generation are experiencing a well-known burnout from the pressure of always having to achieve, be productive and essentially build themselves as individuals. The campaign aims to bring awareness to our phone reliance and how we will subsequently burn out if we do not SWITCH OFF and take some important downtime, guilt free.

We like to have multiple stimuli available at all time as a protection against boredom and to achieve the feeling of ultimate productivity. The idea of having too many tabs open on a digital device feeds into the idea that our brain too cannot multitask as well as we think and that the guilt in relation to constantly feeling productive needs to be shown to be a problem – downtime is just as important as a high level of productivity.

Switch is a display typeface for content based on productivity, screen time and general awareness about digital reliance and the well-known guilty feeling of taking some downtime. The typeface design illustrates the millennial generations reliance on technology – seeing it as a means of productivity, a distraction from needing to ever feel boredom and the reassurance that they are constantly ‘connected’.

The typeface design is a visual representation of these tabs being open with the aim to create an overwhelming feeling. The even spacing of the full letterforms still visually lacks a sense of uniformity and organisation as the filled parts of the letters become the focus and appear to be unevenly kerned. This essentially demonstrates the sporadic amounts of attention we are capable of as we attempt to switch between tasks and stimuli.