Student Project
5 months
Social Digital Campaign
Rieles de Esperanza is a social activism campaign created by Studio Boqui to raise awareness about the experiences of migrants traveling through Mexico aboard La Bestia.
Overview
The Challenge + My Role
Migration through Mexico is a complex issue that can be difficult for communities to understand beyond the statistics.
Within the university community, the project identified a lack of information, stereotypes, and indifference toward the experiences of migrants traveling through Guadalajara. At the same time, organizations supporting migrants already existed, but there was an opportunity to make their work and the ways people could contribute more visible.
The challenge was therefore not simply to create a campaign, but to build a communication system capable of:
Making the issue easier to understand.
Humanizing the experiences behind the topic.
Connecting people with reliable information.
Making opportunities to participate visible.
Connecting digital communication with physical actions.
Guiding the audience from awareness toward participation.
The project ultimately centered on a campaign that combined digital content, a website, physical interventions, social media, and a donation collection supporting migrants.
My Role
Although Rieles de Esperanza was a collaborative project, I had a multidisciplinary role that went beyond visual execution.
I worked as Creative Director / Web | UX & UI, taking responsibility for both the creative direction of the team and several of the project's digital and physical deliverables.
Creative Direction & Project Coordination
One of my main responsibilities was helping turn the initial idea into an organized project that the team could actually execute.
I participated in:
Planning project phases and deliverables.
Establishing deadlines and calendars.
Coordinating the team's workflow.
Following up on different areas of the project.
Contacting external organizations and potential collaborators.
Requesting and reviewing quotations.
Coordinating logistics related to production and deliverables.
The project itself was structured across research, development, execution, and evaluation phases, with different deliverables and activities distributed throughout the timeline.
This part of the project taught me that creative direction is not only about deciding how something should look. It also involves creating the structure that allows a multidisciplinary team to move from an idea to an actual experience.
Problem
Understanding the Problem
Before designing the campaign, the team investigated the migration context in Guadalajara and the relationship between the university community and the issue.
The research phase included documentary research, digital surveys, qualitative analysis, meetings with organizations, and the identification of potential allies. The project also considered organizations such as FM4 Paso Libre and different areas of the University of Guadalajara as part of its network of collaboration.
This research helped define the campaign around three communication goals:
Inform → Build empathy → Encourage participation
Rather than treating the audience as passive viewers, the project needed to give them enough context to understand the issue and clear opportunities to become involved.
Goals
Designing for Action
One of the most important aspects of the project was connecting communication with a tangible action.
The campaign included a collection of supplies for migrants, with different categories such as food and water, clothing and protection, hygiene, health and first aid, and safety-related supplies. The project planned the creation of 15 kits.
This created a UX challenge that was also a communication challenge:
How do you make it clear not only why someone should care, but what they can actually do?
The digital experience therefore supported the campaign's calls to participation, while posters and social content helped extend those messages into physical university spaces.
The collection was promoted through social media and physical collection points, creating a connection between the digital and physical experience.
Designing Across Touchpoints
The project was not limited to a website.
The experience was distributed across several touchpoints:
Digital
Website
Instagram
Facebook
TikTok
Digital informational content
Reels and stories
Physical
Posters
Banners
University interventions
Collection points
Printed materials
Merchandise
The campaign specifically targeted several University of Guadalajara centers, including CUAAD, CUCSH, CUCEA, and CUCS.
This meant that visual consistency and clarity had to be maintained across very different formats.
My contribution included the editorial design of posters and printed deliverables, helping translate the campaign's visual language into physical communication.
The posters were designed to communicate the issue while also functioning as calls to action for the collection activities.
From campaign message to digital structure
One of the UX challenges was deciding how the campaign information should translate into a digital format.
The project contained different types of information:
Context about migration and La Bestia.
Information about the campaign.
Ways to participate.
Donation information.
Collection details.
Information connected to the organizations involved.
The website therefore needed to balance information and action.
Instead of treating the website simply as a promotional landing page, I approached it as a digital point of reference where users could understand the campaign and find practical information about how to participate.
Editorial Design as Part of the UX
Although editorial design was not my only responsibility, it became an important part of the overall experience.
The campaign relied on visual communication to make a complex and emotionally sensitive subject easier to approach.
The visual system combined a defined color palette, typography, and an urban-inspired graphic language intended to reference movement through Guadalajara and the migrant experience.
For me, the important connection between editorial design and UX was information clarity.
Whether someone encountered the campaign through a poster on campus or through the website, the communication needed to feel like part of the same experience.
Challenges
From Partnerships to my own challenges
Working With External Organizations
The project required communication beyond the design team.
I was involved in contacting organizations and coordinating with external collaborators, including organizations connected to migrant support.
One of the key organizations involved was FM4 Paso Libre, which works with migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and people in transit in the Guadalajara metropolitan area.
The collaboration ultimately included delivering the collected supplies and kits to FM4. The team also documented the experience and interviewed members of the organization to create additional content for the campaign's digital channels.
For me, this was an important part of the project because it connected design decisions with the real-world context the campaign was trying to address.
From Planning to Execution
One of the biggest learning experiences from Rieles de Esperanza was seeing how many decisions exist between a design concept and a finished project.
My responsibilities required me to move between different types of work:
Planning
→ calendars, deadlines, deliverables and coordination
Communication
→ organizations, collaborators and quotations
Creative Direction
→ visual consistency and team coordination
UX/UI & Web
→ website structure, interface and responsive experience
Editorial Design
→ posters and printed materials
Execution
→ coordinating deliverables and supporting the campaign's physical and digital implementation
Working across these areas gave me a better understanding of design as a process rather than simply an end product.
Outcome
Results and Lessons
Rieles de Esperanza became a multidisciplinary campaign that connected research, visual communication, digital design, physical intervention, and community participation.
The project created an ecosystem rather than a single deliverable:
Research → Communication → Digital Experience → Physical Interaction → Community Action
My contribution allowed me to work across that entire process, while developing particular ownership over the project's creative direction, web/UX/UI design, editorial materials, and project coordination.
More importantly, the project helped me understand how UX/UI can exist beyond traditional product environments.
A website can be part of a campaign.
A poster can be part of a user journey.
A digital experience can lead to a physical action.
For me, UX/UI became a way of thinking about how people encounter information, understand it, and decide what to do next.
What I Learned
Rieles de Esperanza challenged me to work beyond the boundaries of a single design discipline.
I learned how to:
Coordinate a multidisciplinary creative project.
Turn a broad social issue into a structured communication experience.
Organize timelines, deliverables, and external communications.
Design digital experiences within a larger communication ecosystem.
Think about responsive web experiences across desktop and mobile.
Translate a visual system across digital and physical formats.
Balance information, emotional communication, and calls to action.
Work with external organizations and real-world project constraints.
Take responsibility for a project while collaborating with other designers and creatives.
Most importantly, I learned that good design is not only about what people see. It is also about what they understand, where the experience takes them, and what it enables them to do.
