Cartoons are very much part of the East Asian communications landscape and found everywhere from product launches to mascots for sports competitions, along with public information uses such as police anti-crime campaigns, and what to do in a subway emergency. China is no exception, “cartoons have a magic that enable the audience to relax and be interested about the ‘idea’, ‘concept’, or ‘knowledge’ rather than just pure words,” says Shao Jingfeng, SAIC Motor Technical Centre’s Vice President of Design.

Having already successfully used cartoons in some car launches SAIC Design decided to use cartoons as a way of communicating to the public how to stay safe with the onslaught of the covid-19 virus. “Since we feel that a ‘correct way of protecting’ is what everybody critically needs, why not come up with a series of cartoons to make people more easily understand the correct way?” explains Shao who came up with the idea. SAIC has released six series – a total of 54 cartoons – to tackle suggestions for personal protection, mask choice, things you never want, returning to work, disinfection, and protecting children. The general public were often unclear about such topics and using social media such as WeChat the cartoons could spread quickly giving people an easy format to digest the information. “Our initiative was to let more and more people quickly understand those protecting methods. It was for public benefit consideration,” explains Shao.

You can read the full article here