Visual Language LLC

Writing and Design by Ellen M Shapiro

Institute for Mental Health Initiatives

Channeling Children’s Anger

This nonprofit in Washington, DC, chose us to design, pro bono, the graphics for their nationwide campaign get directors, producers, and writers to decrease the amount and severity of violence in TV shows, movies, and music videos.

The much-awarded logo was designed by Terri Bogaards at Shapiro Design Associates, my former company. Its first application was this invitation to the kickoff event at the American Film Institute Theater, sent to producers, directors, screenwriters, and other media people.
A suite of materials for IMHI’s two-day international Conference at which leading psychologists and university professors spoke about such topics as the connection between anger and violence, substance abuse, eating disorders, and suicide.
Tee-shirts were one of the items in the gift bags.
Campaign poster​ by Terri Bogaards​ brought in supporters,​ donations, and design​ awards.
Among other IMHI projects was a booklet distributed to parents of young children in areas devastated by fires, earthquakes, and other disasters — illustrated by children who’d experienced them.

The campaign began with violence, but IMHI also focused on issues that were often portrayed with a lack of sensitivity, including fear, risk-taking, hate, loss, sex, parenting, and aging. Dialogue, a four-page, two-color quarterly, quickly attracted an advisory board of leaders in the media and had a circulation of 20,000. “Our goal,” IMHI’s editors wrote, “is to transform complex mental health concepts into positive models of human interaction.”

Each issue gave me the opportunity to hone my editing skills on dense text written by psychologists and to use my favorite illustrators. Girls, Food and Body Image was illustrated by Paul Hoffman; Father’s Starring Role by Michael Witte; Portraying Enduring Love by Ellott Banfield; and Starting School by Victor Juhasz.

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