Can You See the Problem?
This series of tongue-in-cheek awareness posters was developed to highlight the ongoing issue of vehicles parking on sidewalks across Cork City. Rather than taking a purely instructional approach, the campaign uses playful, interactive visuals to encourage viewers to stop, engage, and recognize the issue for themselves.
The posters invite the audience to “spot the problem,” using humor and visual storytelling to highlight how blocked sidewalks affect different pedestrians, including older adults, caregivers, children, cyclists, dog walkers, and wheelchair users.
A key part of the concept was building a modular illustration system, allowing characters and vehicles to be swapped, combined, and reconfigured depending on the message, audience, or campaign placement. This created a flexible design toolkit that could easily be adapted for different scenarios while maintaining a cohesive visual language.
Pedestrians
A library of illustrated pedestrian characters I developed to represent the wide range of people impacted by obstructed sidewalks.
These characters were intentionally designed to be modular and interchangeable, allowing them to be reused across multiple poster variations and public messaging scenarios. The set includes older adults, caregivers, children, cyclists, dog walkers, and other everyday sidewalk users, reinforcing the real-world impact of poor parking behavior.
Vehicles
Alongside the pedestrian library, I created a complementary set of illustrated vehicles that could be layered directly in front of the characters to visually communicate obstruction.
This system-based approach allowed the campaign to remain flexible, scalable, and easily updated, turning a single concept into a wider toolkit for future public awareness messaging.
By combining humor with modular design, the work transforms a recurring civic issue into a memorable and engaging visual campaign.
