YRC Clothing Drive

Experiential Design, Brand design

The Youth Resource Center (YRC) Clothing Drive was a student group service project in 2018 held in collaboration with Volunteers of America, Utah to help collect gently used, on-trend clothing for unhoused teens.

How do you eliminate barriers to donation and make a clothing drive feel cool?

In the fall of 2018, my senior BFA class split into interest groups to brand and take charge of various events in our community. My interests in fashion and youth mentorship delightfully collided when the opportunity arose to work with the Youth Resource Center in Salt Lake City. Just as the name suggests, the organization provides supplies to unhoused and underprivileged youth, including clothing, food, shelter, activities, and continuing education. When we spoke with the program coordinator, she suggested a clothing drive to gather age-appropriate clothing for teens.

“They want to feel cool in what they wear, just like anyone else. They're teenagers.”

–DIVISION DIRECTOR OF YOUTH HOMELESS SERVICES, Volunteers of America, Utah

Even though Macklemore's hit single "Thrift Shop" had been out for 6 years at the time we hosted this event, the full-on baggy, I-stole-this-from-my-middle-aged-father's-closet, "Thanks, it's thrifted!" look wasn't in just yet, either. These teens wanted to go to school and fit in with their peers. They wanted gently used Nike and North Face, not grandma's cat sweater. To appeal to the rising trend of streetwear, we wanted to brand our clothing drive in a way that felt edgy and urban, and that would subtly tell donors the caliber of apparel we wanted.

The challenge

The foundation of our brand quickly became the idea of having "too many clothes," not undesirable ones. "You have too many clothes" became our battle cry, the phrase we felt would appeal to a largely white, privileged campus. We needed to get the word out in buildings across campus and knew posters were the way to go, but we wanted to stand out. What better way to ask for clothes than by printing our call-to-action on clothes? We screen printed our design directly on to several white cotton tees by hand, allowing the imperfections to add to the streetwear appeal, and posted them on message boards across campus using silver, wire clothespins. 

The approach

Bags printed with our slogan and drop off information, as well as dates, were hung on hooks nailed into wooden donation boxes around campus for students to take home.

We felt confident we'd created an attention-grabbing campaign, but we knew the biggest battle would be, as usual, conversion. How might we get students to actually bring their clothes onto campus and donate them? One teammate's bias against traditional flyers proved to be a foray into a solution. In lieu of paper reminders, we passed out paper shopping bags with the complementary phrase "I have too many clothes" and donation drop-off information also screen-printed across the front. Each wooden donation box also had a nail in the side from which to hang donation bags. The idea was for students to see it, grab it, take it home and let it remind them to fill it and bring it back. We bet that the idea would eliminate common barriers to donations (forgetfulness or inconvenience), and it appeared that our gamble paid off.

The Execution

We received over two 12-passenger vans full of donations in the two weeks the drive was running and even had to collect donations every few days during the drive to make room in the donation boxes. The T-shirt "posters" were among the donations—the ones that didn't make it home with the team, of course. I still wear mine proudly to this day.

RESULTS

Team

Haley Mitchell
Mayra Payne
Katy Klima
Mary Jane Rechter
Mac Keller
Designers

Linda Reynolds
Student Advisor

Youth Resource Center
Beneficiaries

my contributions

  • Assisted in screen printing bags and shirts

  • Coordinated approvals for poster and box locations

  • Wrote and distributed project proposals and handled communications with the center

  • Came up with the idea of "take back bags"

  • Collaborated with the team to design the logo and set type