Allergenius (2018)

Allergenius is an allergy awareness campaign comprising of an app and poster series depicting eight of the fourteen major allergens. The app is designed to help those suffering from mild to severe allergies to learn life-saving information and navigate the scary unknown. The poster series is designed to start a conversation in the general public and break the stigma that has been holding back information and awareness for too long.

As someone with an anaphylactic allergy, I’m always baffled by the lack of information out there for people like me. I often find myself googling things like ‘does this liquor contain tree nuts?’ and finding only a single blog post from 2006 by a guy claiming his friend had a reaction to it. Every day I find out from questionable sources that more things are a risk—pink peppercorns can kill me? The growing popularity of almond milk means I can no longer go to Starbucks? Unfortunately, due to the human aspect of food allergies, not a lot of research has been done. This has allowed misinformation to grow and spread like, well, hives.

While in University I tried to get a Hello Fresh membership, and while they have options for all the voluntary dietary restrictions, they told me they can’t guarantee the absence of cross contamination. Due to my lifetime of these personal experiences, I’m incredibly passionate about this issue that so many people live with and seemingly nothing is being done about. Most brands and restaurants would rather play it safe than ensure the safety of those with major allergies.

I have, however, had great experiences with the few brands and restaurants that really do care. This inspired me to create an app for people like me to more easily find those things. I wanted an app where I could input my allergies and their severity and receive up-to-date ingredients, reviews, and experiences of food products and restaurants near me.

The app design itself is rudimentary as it was created only to illustrate the larger concept.

To support the app, I created a series of posters to be placed in public spaces such as the Tube that would not only inform people living with allergies about the app, but would also bring awareness to the commonality of allergies.

I also created small business cards with a quick summary of the purpose of the app that could be handed out to patients by allergists. Believe it or not, this was before the QR code, which would have been a perfect addition to these cards.

Looking back there is quite a bit I would change about the app design, the photography, and the overall visual identity. But I’m still just as passionate about the concept as I was in 2018.

App

Posters

Cards