STRENGTH + LOVE

the City of Angels' Covid-19 Memorial

Client: City of Los Angeles Mayor’s Office

“The City Remembers” COVID-19 Memorial Campaign

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the City of Los Angeles needed a way to honor over 30,000 lives lost and create a shared sense of healing across a deeply fragmented city.

The challenge wasn’t logistical — it was emotional.

The city had statements, ceremonies, and statistics, but no unifying world for people to process collective grief together. The Mayor’s Office needed to transform remembrance into something that could be felt — on every corner, in every neighborhood, by every resident.

We approached this not as a campaign, but as a citywide world building moment — a three-day living memorial that turned public space into emotional architecture.

We focused on three key World Building pillars:

( wORLD BUILDING APPROACH )

We identified how grief and community remembrance show up in LA’s diverse cultural fabric — from candles and colors to collective symbols of resilience — and used that as the emotional foundation for the campaign.
We developed the campaign’s full sensory language — color palette, typography, graphics, and environmental visuals — that balanced reverence with renewal. Every design element served as a visual cue for hope and unity.
We brought the memorial to life across the city: custom posters and banners for bus stops and benches, large-format city signage, and coordinated lighting of a central Downtown LA landmark. For three days, the city itself became the medium — a physical manifestation of remembrance.
The project transformed the idea of a “memorial” from a static ceremony into a shared emotional experience that rippled across Los Angeles.
- Perception Shift: The campaign reframed the Mayor’s Office from being a distant institution into a compassionate community presence — visibly standing with the people.
- Behavioral Shift: Residents documented and shared the installations across social media, using campaign visuals and colors as personal tributes.
- Internal Impact: City leaders described the campaign as the first time the office had “felt human” in how it communicated collective loss.
The three-day activation became more than a remembrance — it became an act of civic healing, reminding Angelenos that recovery is not just physical, but emotional and cultural.