Review of 2019 MIAD series article for OnMilwaukee

As a designer and a young person with a passion for social issues, Mallory Krubenik’s article for OnMilwaukee caught my attention right away. The article is about the Lacey’s Hope Project, a campaign to spread awareness about human trafficking. The article discusses the topic of human trafficking in the city of Milwaukee and also touches on the meaning of “design activism” with a brief interview with Alison Galarza, the Designer and Art Director for the campaign. 

I think this is a successful article, according to the insights and advice from OnMilwaukee Senior Writing and Editor Molly Snyder. The article is short- approximately 500 words- but gives an adequate amount of information on a serious topic. My attention was not lost at all while reading the article and it was an easy, interesting, and informative read. 

The writer’s introduction is fitting for the OnMilwaukee audience, which we determined to be tourists and the young, liberal adults in Milwaukee. So starting the article off with “For many, Milwaukee is the vibrant and energetic undiscovered gem of the Midwest” is perfect. It then gets serious and to-the-point as the following paragraph transitions into statistics about Milwaukee’s human trafficking problem. Throughout the article, hyperlinks are used appropriately to give the reader the option to learn more about the marketing team and the campaign.

My only critique of the article is with the headline. The headline, “"Design activism" raises awareness through advertising of serious issues” merely states the definition of design activism, and doesn’t mention the campaign at all. In my opinion, the campaign is the main topic of the article, and the topic of design activism is touched on later in the article. I would have preferred to have seen Lacey’s Hope Project somewhere in the headline, rather than having it pushed into the subhead.