Made in China | Campaign
Typography
Use type to celebrate a community of your choice and showcase what makes it unique.
While interning at Thinking Juice, a local integrated agency, I chose to work on a D&AD brief set by Monotype that involved translating a community using typography.
I chose girls adopted from China as my community and began asking friends what their experiences were growing up and whether there were anecdotes or snippets of conversations that I could extract from these discussions that could be used to gain key insight.
What People Are Saying
“The expectations and the stereotypes that are forced upon you by society leaves you feeling even more of an outsider.”
— Chinese Adoptee, 21
“Lucky is a funny word. I wouldn’t trade my mum for the world but to be rid of the anguish always in my heart. Maybe.”
— Chinese Adoptee, 20
After talking to a few of my friends surrounding this issue, one of the most common corrections that I came across and also constantly find myself saying to people is,
“No, I don’t speak chinese.”
This key insight was invaluable in how I decided to proceed with this project as I began asking more specific questions surrounding this topic choosing phrases that I felt could work to raise awareness and perhaps encourage individuals to be a little more sensitive to this personal circumstance.
Just say yellow.
banana noun
a pejorative term for ethnic East Asian or Southeast Asian people who are considered to have abandoned their Asian cultural identity or lost touch with it in order to adopt a Western cultural identity.
Once I had gathered all of the quotes that I wanted to use, I considered the typography, colour palette and format. In keeping with traditional Chinese lettering, I chose a font that mimicked calligraphic, brush strokes. The colour palette was inspired by the term ‘banana’ which is a derogatory name used to describe a person, who is culturally ‘white’ or ‘western’ on the inside and ‘yellow’ on the outside.
