Suicide Prevention Now has been named a Best Of Year winner in Graphic Design USA’s Designing For Good category, in the publication’s American Graphic Design Awards. We built the platform for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, which commissions the research it delivers.
Designing for a Subject That Constrains the Design
Most campaign work is judged on how forcefully it moves people. Suicide prevention messaging cannot be judged that way, because the techniques that move an audience hardest are frequently the ones most likely to harm the people in that audience who are themselves at risk.
There are established guidelines for talking about suicide safely, and they rule out a great deal of what a campaign would normally reach for — certain imagery, certain framings, method detail, the emotional register that makes a public health message go around.
What Was Left to Work With
Working inside those limits is a design problem before it is a sensitivity problem. The platform had to be arresting enough that someone scrolling past would stop, and calm enough that stopping would not hurt them — while giving anyone who did stop something concrete to do next rather than a feeling to sit with.
The case study covers the editorial and visual constraints, and how the calls to action were sequenced for people arriving in very different states of mind.
About the Award
The American Graphic Design Awards are run annually by Graphic Design USA, which has covered the design profession since 1963. Designing For Good recognizes work created for social and public benefit.
About Pare
Pare is an AI-native digital consultancy, founded in 2007 as Oomph and rebuilt in 2026 for the AI age. The firm builds websites, platforms, and digital products — and the intelligence inside them — for the organizations people depend on most. Its healthcare practice spans hospital systems, public health campaigns and clinical professional societies.
Press inquiries: press@pare.co