Beginning as our thesis project at Emily Carr University, The Hometown Project is a multifaceted campaign and website system designed to engage citizens of smaller cities to start grassroots movements and projects. Using our hometowns as cases studies, my partner Janine Merkl and I designed a four step process to help facilitate this behaviour change: Awareness, Alignment, Engagement, and Action.

For our thesis presentation, the step 1, Awareness, took the form of a promotional online video. The identity for The Hometown Project uses simple shapes and helping hands, giving a sense that anyone can participate and build something unique for their community. This simplistic aesthetic can be adopted by any small city, but is also customizable to make a unique identity for each place. The collateral was designed to be created and shared easily within small communities: the online videos, totes, posters, stickers and zines can be recreate with small budgets but still have a city wide impact.

Also for our thesis presentation, and animation for Step 4, Action, illustrated our website concept for The Hometown Project. The site helps create action within small cities by giving citizens a forum to share their civic project ideas, access to resources to help these ideas become a reality, and a support system built from their very own community.