The Empowerment of Music - Toxic Masculinity

A competition brief: 'Find a genre, song or musical movement that best represents a cause and use typography to bring it to life.' I chose the song, Samaritans, from the Punk band, IDLES. The cause it represents is toxic masculinity and how damaging this is to men and their mental health. IDLES would relaunch their single, with the charity, The ManKind Project, which also help man tackle and openly talk about toxic masculinity. In this project, 40gsm paper was used, which exposes the fragility of men’s mental health when put under immense pressure to simply ‘man up’. Juxtaposing this, thick card was used underneath in the Vinyl covers, Zine and Poster, portraying the many layers of toxic masculinity and how the phrase ‘better out than in’ is much tougher to achieve. The Zine is included in the limited edition Vinyl, which helps the audience understand what toxic masculinity is, included is an interview from IDLES frontman, Joe Talbot, who opens talks about men's mental health and toxic masculinity. The Zine brings a call for action; for the men to share their versions of the #I'marealyguyandI... where they share healthier views on masculinity to the Instagram page, for a wide range of audiences to view.