We interviewed a number of families affected by autism to hear their personal stories of how their children first expressed the signs.

With these stories, we built an entire scale-model world as a representation of the way an autistic child experiences autism.

The posters feature a real autistic boy named Jacob. Transformed into an animated character, each poster shows Jacob demonstrating a sign of autism as he described experiencing it himself.

This story, set, and character were built entirely from interviews with children that have autism (and their families). Every scene (and many of the props) were inspired by real-world stories and toys we filmed during the interviews.

Apart from the animated characters, which were created in CG, everything you see is made up of real, miniature objects. Lighting and shading were considered down to the smallest detail to enhance reality.

Posters were created from high-resolution photographs of this created world. Typography was hand-designed by an illustrator to complement the distorted world of reality and autism.

Autism Speaks’ PSA has shown a positive trend, with increases in awareness of the campaign, and parents paying attention to the issues and the awareness of the signs of autism. Our new Drivers Analysis confirms that the PSA drives the belief that autism is common, so parents take action to learn more, and then plan to have their child tested. Being aware of the issue, feeling favorable toward Autism Speaks, and having a child with autism continue to drive awareness and action.