Department of Health Immunisation Program
12th September 2025
For immunisation to be effective, as many people as possible need to get the necessary vaccinations. The WA Department of Health’s Adolescent Immunisation program not only had to communicate complex messaging, but it also had to engage with and educate the entire cross-section of Western Australian society.
The key challenge of this campaign branding project was to appeal to and reflect this diverse audience, including kids, guardians, teachers, and people of all ages, genders, nationalities, and cultures, within a limited budget.
“Our design solution uses simple geometric shapes and a broad colour palette to design a flexible character system. We created 18 foundation figures, with the ability to add to and evolve them as the campaign rolls out, creating diversity and keeping it inclusive, fresh and adaptable.”
The campaign had to work across a large variety of different media, including website, guardian and student information resources, social media posts, eDMs, digital advertising, and radio/streaming.
The Department also required a complete design system that could be used by their internal design team for the creation of new collateral and campaign refreshment next year. The key idea that shaped the work was to focus on illustration as the solution. However, simply illustrating people wasn’t enough to overcome the need for diversity and inclusion. We realised that if we created a simple yet sophisticated design system incorporating many elements, we could make an unlimited amount of characters, as individual and varied as our audience.
Our design solution uses simple geometric shapes and a broad colour palette to design a flexible character system. We created 18 foundation figures, with the ability to add to and evolve them as the campaign rolls out, creating diversity and keeping it inclusive, fresh and adaptable.
We also incorporated stock photography by ‘replicating’ the kids in the photos as illustrated characters. This made the characters unique and fully integrated the stock images into the campaign.
By simplifying our approach, we expanded the brand’s reach, proving that with a bit of creativity, limited resources don’t have to limit engagement. What made this project different to us was the limitations on the use of photography to reflect diversity. With a decent budget, we would probably have gone down this route to depict a diverse group. As is often the case, from the limitation comes the solution. We were ‘forced’ to turn to illustration to reflect the full spectrum of unique individuals you get across the school/family landscape.
What also shaped the solution was the necessity for us to hand the system over to the client’s internal design team. So, simple characters and shapes ensured the integrity of the brand/campaign would remain, as the system is simple to replicate, yet sophisticated enough to show diversity.
