> More Than Just A Pretty Face

For our 2020 submission to D&AD's New Blood Festival, we selected Google and HMTC's brief. As three young female designers we were instantly drawn to this brief. As a collective we have used this brief, as an opportunity to voice our outrage against, the objectification of women, along with our passion for typography. The objective behind the campaign, More Than Just A Pretty Face, is for any female to feel they are being taken seriously, within whatever they choose to do. Women have more to offer than their attractiveness. We should be valued on our actions, talents and what we decide to contribute to this world, rather than what is displayed on the outside. We are tired of constantly existing in a paradox, where our bodies are overly sexualised but we are simultaneously judged for discussing our sex lives, or when we are praised for being slim but are told we must be curvy. We must also of course make our selves up, but not to wear too much make up, as natural is always better. Whatever right we do, there will always be a wrong, when it comes to altering ourselves. It is like we are living in a vacuum, where no matter what your efforts are, they will be sucked away and replaced with a critique. We will always be perceived with a disadvantage, due to our gender, and the baggage that inevitably accompanies it. More Than Just A Pretty Face with the aid of Lily Allen’s lyrics and Google Fonts, reclaims the obsessive fascination of modern day femininity and challenges it. Lily Allen’s music possessives an amazing use of irony, when expressing her frustrations of dealing with sexism within the music industry. We believed her song, Hard Out Here is a perfect fit for the campaign. The song itself oozes satire while addressing the less flippant, hard hitting questions that bombard women, surrounding objectification. Through our the campaign we have used a range of Google Fonts and different mediums, to illustrate her powerful words. Fusing different types of fonts together was extremely satisfying. The campaign embodies the gothic twirls of UnifrakturCook, whilst also using regimented style of Fit, Erica One and Special Elite to play with image and space. We projected the Google fonts, tracing across the contours of the women’s bodies and faces. From a distance this looks like any stereotypical sexualised advertising hoarding, however on closer inspection the broken up powerful lyrics can start to be read - The composition morphs, from passive manikins the women take ownership of the lyrics enveloping them, like a super power cape, challenging the observer to reflect on their perceptions. We have used the photographs to fill the main type, rather than using colour in the different components belonging to the campaign. This is a visual metaphor: for every statement or assumption that is made about a woman, there is a soul that will not be defined by those judgemental words or thoughts.