Men’s Health
Adobe InDesign | Lightroom Classic | Photography
Year: 2026
Dimension: 8.5 x 11 Inches
Materials: Cigarettes, Cigarette Ashes
Camera: Nikon D7500
Course: Photography for Advertising
Project Timeframe: 3 Weeks
Challenge: Create a campaign that encourages people to donate and seek information about Movember, which raises awareness about men’s mental health.
Disclaimer: This student project is not affiliated with the Movember Foundation.
The Movember Foundation is an annual global charity held throughout November to raise awareness for men’s health issues, many of which are often stigmatized, discouraging men from seeking help.
Movember is known by its walking billboard, the iconic moustache, which is used as a visual form of representation to support men’s health.
In this project, cigarette ashes are used to materialize the symbol of Movember, delivering a direct message without becoming gruesome or lighthearted. Oftentimes, men may silently self-medicate using substances to cope with stress and ease emotional pain away from their loved ones. By using cigarettes, this campaign makes a normalized form of “self-medication” visible to the passerby, sparking conversation, and awareness for men’s mental health.
In this project, cigarette ashes are used to materialize the symbol of Movember, delivering a direct message without becoming gruesome or lighthearted. Oftentimes, men may silently self-medicate using substances to cope with stress and ease emotional pain away from their loved ones. By using cigarettes, this campaign makes a normalized form of “self-medication” visible to the passerby, sparking conversation, and awareness for men’s mental health.
Contact Sheet
Halfway through the photoshoot, I realized that a simpler concept helped convey the struggles of men’s mental health in a straightforward way without having it be gruesome. Smoking was a normalized form of substance abuse that people can use to treat emotional pain. The cigarette concept also appears to be more impactful as it focuses on the present, rather than the past where loss may have already happened. Thus, the cigarette concept can strike conversation more than the gruesome concepts, because it makes people think about their loved ones who do smoke, especially when they read the copywriting.
Situational Mockups
Thumbnail Sketches
The initial concepts were more dark and gruesome where shadows and props such as alcohol bottles, nooses and gravestones were used. However, I thought the concept was too violent and overdone for a public service announcement, which may frighten people instead of raising awareness to encourage people to donate and seek information.