Heads Up

Getting a generation to look up.

Organization: The Dais at TMU (In-house designer), with Rogers
Role: Lead designer and illustrator, then design direction
Scope: Identity, illustration, web, interactive policy map, print, merch
Design outcome: The face of a campaign that helped bring phone restrictions to 10 provinces

URL to IRL sticker sheet: touch grass not screens, aura greater than wifi, reclaiming my time, chronically offline

Overview

Heads Up is a Canada-wide Dais initiative helping schools and students rethink phone use during the school day. It launched as Screen Break, now the name of Rogers’ national program, which the Dais partners on. URL to IRL is its national youth event.

I took it from an idea to a full brand: identity, illustration, web, events, print and merch. As partners and developers joined, I moved into design direction.

The challenge

A conversation about phones in classrooms involves audiences with different needs: educators and policymakers who need clear evidence, and students who will only engage if the program speaks to them on their terms. The design had to earn trust with the first group without losing the second.

Screen Break fill-in postcards: an illustrated front and backs addressed to a school board trustee — For students: fill-in postcards, stamped and mailed to school board trustees on their behalf

Policymaker Playbook cover, August 2025 — For policymakers: the Policymaker Playbook

A custom illustration style

I created the illustration style for Heads Up, and it shows up in everything the campaign makes. I was inspired by ’90s and early 2000s shows about kids at school, like Arthur and The Magic School Bus, and wanted to bring that feeling back for a new generation of students. My first draft was close, but the characters felt too generic, so I kept going until they had their own personality.

ProcessMoodboardsFinal

Moodboard: stills from Arthur and The Magic School Bus, editorial illustrations about phones and screen time, and a five-colour palette of yellow, pink, lime, periwinkle and light blue

Rough pencil sketch of three students and a refined composition sketch, laid together

First character style on blue and pink shapes, with simpler, generic-looking characters

Final key illustration in the custom Heads Up character style: students around a grid sheet, two children stepping out of a phone and a teacher closing blinds

01 MoodboardReferences: Arthur (PBS Kids), The Magic School Bus (Scholastic) and editorial illustration

02 Rough sketches and early compositions

03 First draft: characters without personalityI wasn’t happy with this pass: smooth vector fills and simple faces made the kids look like stock art. So I reworked the style, adding grain, hand-drawn line detail and personal touches like hair clips, star pimple patches and graphic tees.

04 Final: a custom art style made for Heads Up

The final illustration system

Colour

Dais brand

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Added for illustration

Characters

Three students kneeling around a grid sheet with sticky notes and a sleeping phone

Two kids stepping out of a phone screen with an on/off toggle

Girl in bed at night looking at her phone under a moon and stars

Settings and objects

Empty cafeteria background with lime picnic tables and a pink checked tile wall

Three phones standing on an open grid notebook with a pencil, pen, hourglass and sticky notes

Black locker, hourglass and a pink phone cubby holding phones

The Heads Up brand

I built one identity that could speak to everyone, then tuned it for each audience. Sticker-style type, colour and the characters carry the campaign. For policy audiences, the same system steps back into clear hierarchy so the message stays readable.

Heads Up website pages: home, resources, policies by province and about — Website

Pattern

Heads Up postcard back: Why it matters, five benefits of phone-free learning time — Heads Up postcard, front and back

03.1

For educators and policymakers

I designed four guides and playbooks and the interactive policy comparison map, which sets phone restriction policies across Canada side by side, so a parent, teacher or journalist can understand them at a glance.

School Phone Restrictions Implementation Guide cover — Implementation Guide, Navigating Phone Use in Schools, Policymaker Playbook and Teaching Guide

Navigating Phone Use in Schools cover, August 2025 — Implementation Guide, Navigating Phone Use in Schools, Policymaker Playbook and Teaching Guide

Policy comparison map walkthrough

03.2

For students: URL to IRL

URL to IRL is the Dais’s annual youth-led event on phone-free schools. I designed its identity, from street banners and slides to stickers, merch and postcards, so the room feels like it belongs to students.

URL to IRL street banners with illustrated students, hanging from a lamppost — Street banners

URL to IRL event posters, including youth zone signage, schedules and phone-use statistics — Event posters

URL to IRL lockup in four colourways: lime, blue, yellow and pink — URL to IRL lockup

URL to IRL photo-booth strips, blank and with photos — Photo-booth strips

URL to IRL event presentation slides: session titles, speaker cards and a QR code — Event slides

Touch grass, not screens tote bag — Tote bag

URL to IRL stickers on a laptop lid — Stickers

Youth Champions postcard front: Become a Youth Champion, repeated in pink, lime and white — Youth Champions postcards

Be a 2026 Youth Champion postcard: three students around a grid sheet on a lime-to-pink gradient — Youth Champions postcards

What the work supported

10provinces now restrict personal device use in K-12 schools

500+students at the Rogers Screen Break launch at TMU

New Brunswickmoved to a full bell-to-bell phone-free environment with Dais advocacy

These are the program’s results, which the identity and tools helped carry. Source: Dais Impact Report 2023–26.

All work Next: Generation Climate