ACON This is Ending HIV Transmission
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ACON This is Ending HIV Transmission
40 years of community care
ACON (formerly known as The Aids Council of New South Wales) has been delivering campaigns and programs to educate, inform and empower their community since 1985. Our latest campaign for ACON, ‘This is Ending HIV Transmission’ looks to acknowledge their 40 years and how far they’ve come, to keep the community informed about the current state of testing, prevention, treatment and HIV stigma, and to reenergise the effort. Launched in time for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras 2025 season, the campaign appears all over New South Wales.
A global leader
At the height of the AIDS epidemic, ACON were defined by community coming together to respond to the crisis. Facing fear, misinformation and stigma. Losing loved ones. This was the lived experience for people of diverse sexualities and genders in the 80s and 90s. In the last decade, NSW has been a global leader in the response to HIV and the reduction of transmission. While the overall trend is promising, the numbers of HIV cases particularly in communities in Greater Western Sydney and those who have recently migrated to Australia are a focus of this latest campaign. This latest campaign is just one in a long series of Ending HIV campaigns we have created together with ACON over the past 15-plus years.
A multi-faceted approach
Ending HIV isn’t one thing, and it never has been. Our concept and messaging for the campaign is driven by bringing together everything ACON has produced over four decades to contribute to Ending HIV. A diverse and eclectic montage of visuals — archival, sourced, commissioned, community, user generated content, stills, motion graphics. Simultaneously big picture and grass roots. Profound and playful. Then and now. All of this is Ending HIV Transmission. With this concept in mind, we produced a joyfully explosive typographic campaign featuring a cinema ad, street posters, social media videos, a radio ad, animated banners, bus wraps, outdoor out of home executions, print ads and merch to be handed out at the Mardi Gras Parade.
Kris Andrew Small
To mark this 40-year milestone, Ant Donovan, our Group Creative Director, invited Sydney artist and designer Kris Andrew Small to collaborate with us on bringing a nostalgic, diverse and vibrant feel to the typographic elements of campaign. On choosing Kris, Ant says, “For me Kris’s style bottles the colour, vibrancy and energy of the community and does a great job of expressing the moment in time”. On working on the campaign, Kris says, “I didn’t set out to start making work as a queer artist. That just happened naturally. It’s one thing to make work that I like, it’s another to make work that the client likes, and it’s a whole other thing to make work that people notice.”
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“We've had an incredible relationship with Frost* over the years, for almost 15 years we've been collaborating to create impactful campaigns for people in our communities.”
Matthew Vaughan, Director (HIV & Sexual Health), ACON
“I didn’t set out to start making work as a queer artist. That just happened naturally. It’s one thing to make work that I like, it’s another to make work that the client likes, and it’s a whole other thing to make work that people notice.”
Kris Andrew Small, Artist and Designer
