Redesigning Sustainability (sb2)

The opportunity came about to work in collaboration with animation and motion graphics students from Nanyang Polytechnic University in Singapore, to create an outcome in response to one of the United Nations 17 sustainability goals. The group decision was made to focus on raising awareness for gender inequality through a video campaign to be shared across social media. Although our contribution to the brief has been completed, the video campaign is still being developed by the students who are now back in Singapore.

RESEARCH

We researched in to the countries which had the lowest rates of gender equality against a range of criteria - including wage equality, number of women in parliament and life expectancy for both sexes It was found that countries in the East had the lowest percentage of gender equality and so our campaign shifted towards having more of a focus on Eastern culture, being from a Western culture it was very useful to have memebers of the group from the East as they had prior, first hand knowledge on gender equality in Eastern Culture.

Through research we as a group identified 3 key areas which our video campaign would focus on, the first area being education. It was found that girls are not given the chance for a proper education and upon graduation women are given redundant positions where they are denied promotions against their male co-workers. Another area of focus was unequal wages, we found that there is a stereotypical perception that women are less competent in the work place and that many women fear the backlash and harassment for speaking out about the inequalities within the workplace.
The final area of focus was unemployment, we found that companies have a preference towards men over women due to the possibility of women requestion maternity leave.

During the research stage we also identified the target audience for our video campaign being teenagers aged 14 years and up, we chose this age range with the aim of preventing the issue rather than combating a pre existing one in adults as teenagers at this age begin to think more maturely and are still developing their opinions and attitudes. The secondary audience is all types of people across the globe, as gender is not just a woman’s issue, it’s a human issue which affects us all.

DESIGN DEVELOPMENT

The role appointed to myself was image and typography creator, the group agreed that having hand drawn illustrations relating to gender and inequality accompanied by hand drawn type would make for a more visually engaging video campaign.
The design style that was used was quite playful in order to attract the key target audience, other styles were tried out, however these were felt to communicate anger in a way whereas the video campaign aims to educate on serious topics in a visually appealing and inviting way.
The typography designed was really liked by the group, however it was agreed that hand drawn type could only be used for some aspects of the design, due to the 10-15 second time limit, the text needs to be able to be understood quickly so the message can easily be communicated.

As the concept is a video campaign to be shared across social media, a script was made with the intention of voice overs being added to the 10-15 second videos. The voice over gives a deeper explanation of how big the problem actually is, juxtaposing the playful illustrations.
Another member of the group added colour to the illustrations and edited the compositions in a visually striking way, the colours were chosen in order to not conform with the gender stereotypes of using pink and blue.
As half of the members of our group have returned to Singapore to continue working on the project, the voice over has not yet been recorded and the video clips are not yet animated, however the general concept behind the design can be seen.

script - Gender is a kind of social construct, a way of seeing.

It is not set in nature like biology, it is something more.

For every girl we educate, we educate a family.

Maternal deaths would be reduced and 98,000 lives would be saved.

For every dollar a woman earns,

poverty rates would be cut in half and 26,000,000 children would benefit from it.

For every woman employed into the workforce,

global growth would increase by another $12,000,000,000,000.

Too often, gender equality is seen as a women’s issue, a feminist issue.

This is just as nonsensical as racism being an issue just for the minority.

Equality can become realised if only we believe and have the initiative to take action.

What we share is more powerful than what divides us.

Workin with the students from Singapore was a very unique experience, it was very interesting to see the different ways of working and how their process differed to ours. Although it would have been nice to have more time to work on the breif with them, we completed our part of the campain and we are excited to see the final animated version once completed. The ideation process of this brief was the most valuable, personally. It was a great way to see how successful a concept would be in the real world which is something not normally considered within my practice. The topic we based our campaign on provided me with knowledge I had not previously known f, it was a very valuable experience in terms of meeting designers from a different country and merging together the different approaches to design.