Project Overview

The Box Hill Bin Signage Project encourages the responsible disposal of litter and waste to protect the environment and quality of life in the Box Hill community in Melbourne’s east. It features 10 poster designs tailored to specific bin locations and local amenities across the Box Hill area.

Project Commissioner

Whitehorse City Council

Project Creator

Cheee Creative

Project Brief

The project team seeks to build on the Whitehorse City Council’s efforts in waste and litter management and its extensive community consultation in this area. As these efforts focus on community education, the posters reinforce that friendly and inviting spirit, rather than lecturing people on how to care for their environment.

The Council’s extensive community engagement highlights concerns among residents about litter and its effect on waterways. Our posters incorporate illustrations of local parks and waterways, as well as flora and fauna native to the area, to reflect the community’s desire for a clean and thriving local environment.

We represent Box Hill’s culturally diverse background by using a variety of skin tones in our drawings, while the inclusion of the Eastern long-necked turtle and the Crimson Rosella is the result of consultations with the area’s large Chinese-speaking community.

Our approach creates a uniquely local campaign that residents can connect with. The clean, simple designs are visually pleasing and harmonious to parkland surroundings, and distinctive enough to stand out from other outdoor advertising in busier shopping mall settings.

Project Innovation/Need

The posters feature in 36 specific locations in Box Hill Mall, Box Hill Gardens, Box Hill Town Hall, Carrington Road and reserves along Whitehorse Road. Each poster is tailored to convey a specific message in each of these locations, creating a uniquely local campaign.

Parkland areas present the Love Your Park and Love Where You Play posters. These posters feature local parks and waterways, native plants and local animal species such as the Eastern long-necked turtle and the Crimson Rosella. The posters reinforce the environmental, social and health benefits of parks and the importance of protecting wildlife.

Love Where You Live features the Box Hill Town Hall, with people exercising or catching up with friends. It reminds residents of the lifestyle amenities they enjoy in Box Hill.

Love Where You Meet and Love Where You Shop can be seen in the busier shopping and restaurant precincts of Box Hill. They emphasise a sense of local community and support for local businesses while reminding shoppers to avoid single-use plastics and take reusable bags and containers with them.

The Choose to Reuse and Keep it Clean and Green make innovative use of the new Box Hill logo. A logo is often a standalone item in signage or advertising, tucked away at the bottom of the poster. We incorporate the logo into the poster design, as a perch for native wildlife, a hook for shopping bags or a tray for a coffee cup.

Design Challenge

Our design fulfills three distinct requirements for Whitehorse City Council. It highlights the new Box Hill logo and convey a strong community message about responsibly disposing of waste and litter. It also enables the Council to use the posters as a visual device to brighten up the local area, connecting residents from culturally diverse backgrounds with their community and encouraging a sense of pride in Box Hill as a great place to live, work and play.

Ten different poster designs utilise bold colours, simple graphics and stylised illustrations that stand out, while also complementing the local surroundings. Each poster has a different focus, such as Love Your Park or Love Where You Play, with illustrations of local landmarks such as the Box Hill Gardens, and species native to the area including the Eastern long-necked turtle and the Crimson Rosella. The posters utilise the bold green, blue and pink colour palette of the new Box Hill logo to catch the eye and further promote the logo.

Effectiveness

The project has a recognised social impact, named as one of four finalists in the Sustainable Cities Award for 2021 in the Litter category. In its comments on the project, Keep Victoria Beautiful highlights the campaign’s success “evoking a sense of pride of where you live, practising proper waste disposal and showcasing what Box Hill has to offer”. It also references the community engagement that informs key visual elements of the campaign, including consultation with the Chinese-speaking community.