With the aim of helping to raise awareness among young people about the importance of health protocols during the pandemic, ORT and VMLY&R challenged 10th and 11th graders to come up with creative messages encouraging young Uruguayans to enjoy the summer and their vacations responsibly. From among the submitted ideas, the ORT and VMLY&R team evaluated and selected María José Baraibar’s entry as the winner, which will serve as the inspiration for a nationwide advertising campaign to promote social responsibility.
The awards ceremony began with an introduction to the competition by the dean of the School of Communication and Design, Eduardo Hipogrosso, followed by remarks from Juan Cardeillac, creative vice president at VMLY&R, who highlighted the production quality, the care, and the concept of viewing self-care as a gift to others —a simple and direct message with significant added value in the context of COVID-19.
According to the winner, Baraibar, she liked the contest’s concept of one young person passing the message on to another, and she decided to take a more sentimental approach with her entry, focusing on the support that families of sick people or those in the “at-risk population” have to care for them and, above all, to thank them. “The idea of ‘taking care of oneself as a gift’ came to me because I saw the little box I use in the video at home, and thinking about family, the upcoming holidays, and a gift as a representation of the Christmas gift our parents always give us, this time we need to reverse the roles and give it to them—simply by putting on a mask and taking care of ourselves,” she said.
As for the video format, he always knew he wanted to make a video using photos and a voice-over. However, he considered other options that involved more acting and more characters, but ultimately decided to create a dialogue and, based on that, began designing the images that eventually made up the video.
With a strong passion for designing and creating this type of content, Baraibar has enrolled in the Bachelor’s Degree in Multimedia Design at ORT, set to begin in March 2021—a program she said she hadn’t even heard of until a few months ago and that she “really loved” because it focuses on UX/UI design —a field that has always motivated her—which combines visual design with the enhancement of the user experience, as applied in apps for smart devices and web platforms.
After receiving the award alongside his parents, Baraibar emphasized the importance of repaying all the love and selfless support one receives from one’s family with a gift that consists of nothing more and nothing less than taking care of oneself. “We never know when it will be the last time we’ll be able to thank them,” he concluded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbq_z0SOjuY