For this assignment, we were to choose a pre-existing design project that focuses on a social issue or activist topic and essentially re-imagine it how we see fit. Upon initial briefing, I got very excited about this project because I consider myself an activist with a particular passion about several important issues such as saving the environment, feminism, LGBTQA+ rights, and so forth. As a designer whose work I hope will reach more people one day, I do believe we have a responsibility to use our craft to help better the world, even if in small ways. This project was a wonderful opportunity for me to explore several design activist projects and think about how I wanted to improve or re-shape a design that holds to the same message and values.
The project I ended up choosing for this assignment is called “Stop Telling Women to Smile” by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh. She describes it as: “A street art project addressing gender based street harassment”. While her posters are impactful and cohesive, Tatyana is an illustrator and I found the actual typography in her work to be very weak. The diverse portraits of women she creates definitely send a message, but I wanted to focus on the words being said (eg. “My outfit is not an invitation”) and create some typographic designs without distracting imagery or decoration. I think this would get the message across even more effectively because if there were large & strong pieces of text across billboards, on public transportation, and everywhere else people would see it, people would have no choice but to read these important statements over and over. I wanted to take Tatyana’s passion for gender equality (as well as my own) and make the project more widespread this way because catcalling and street harassment are a huge problem right now, especially in big cities.
