We've all been down the period product aisle in a store.
Pink, feminine designs make themselves known, or those daring to be different with purple or blue. Still, the driving home of "women use our products" is the message heard in these aisles.
How would you feel if you went down this aisle as a transgender man or nonbinary person who menstruates? Invisible.
'Clarity' started as your every day period branding design and campaign project but grew into something more when my own transition saw me in need of period products and feeling all too alien when walking the aisles especially the more I presented as a masculine of center individual. I knew other trans men and nonbinary people who felt the same way about period products.
Pink, feminine designs make themselves known, or those daring to be different with purple or blue. Still, the driving home of "women use our products" is the message heard in these aisles.
How would you feel if you went down this aisle as a transgender man or nonbinary person who menstruates? Invisible.
'Clarity' started as your every day period branding design and campaign project but grew into something more when my own transition saw me in need of period products and feeling all too alien when walking the aisles especially the more I presented as a masculine of center individual. I knew other trans men and nonbinary people who felt the same way about period products.
So with this campaign project, I sought to provide a solution to the problem of masculine and nonbinary people being forgotten in the period aisle. Let's dive into it!
Branding Design was important and our first stop.
Inspired by Paula Scher's Public Theatre branding design job, I employed the same technique to have the word 'Clarity' start heavy and end light. This was to reflect the period's cycle which starts heavy flow and ends light flow.
Clarity will be with you through it all, they are dependable as a brand.
The dot on the 'i' is also purposefully larger to symbolize the "period" experienced.
The dot on the 'i' is also purposefully larger to symbolize the "period" experienced.
We originally wanted different palettes for each gender or lack thereof group, but ended up deciding on a nice clean aqua for the final look. This colour choice brought us in the masculine zone but the freshness of aqua kept it more sanitized looking.
Package Design
Our product needed to come in a recognizable box that was easy to spot on your doorstep if you were to order this product. Something stylish that would speak to a broad range of people. Eventually we landed on a more pastel design with muted tones and a nice strong and dependable navy blue to contrast the aqua of the branding itself. It stands out against it well.
Polling Samples from Community & Demographic Research
We ended up needing to determine how the box would open, so we ran a poll. Not only asking this, we also needed to prove that the demand for this type of product was out there and existed in today's world. We polled some trans masculine and nonbinary people who needed and used period products and asked how the products and package design could be better for their demographic.
Point of Purchase Design
The point of purchase for Clarity's period products needed to be somewhat of a saving grace at the end of every period aisle that is overwhelmingly feminine. I wanted it to be a section that they could see as hope at the end of the tunnel.
Visualizing the Motion Design Commercial...
Things started out really simple for the designs of the characters for the 30 second advertisement for Clarity. It was to compare two lives lived: trans masculine and/or nonbinary people who both get their period going about their day, one is NOT a Clarity customer and the second IS a Clarity customer. The Clarity customer gets to have a great day full of confidence knowing they are covered by Clarity's promptness with delivering their package of period products right on time.
Our final storyboards show us in the lives of transgender men and/or nonbinary people who still menstruate. They wake up on the day of their period, groggy. The Clarity customer wakes up putting on his binder for the day, a compression type garment used by trans men and nonbinary people of varying genders or lack thereof. The non-Clarity customer picks up his Testosterone Cypionate prescription at the pharmacy, another element to show both of these people were transgender and that was our demographic. By this time, the Clarity customer is greeted with their monthly box of everything they need to survive MENstruating! Flash back over to the non-Clarity customer, and we see he goes to get his period products at the store where all the pads and tampons are sold out! Oh no! He is defeated. Meanwhile, the Clarity customer is spending time with their family and doing what they really want to be doing instead of worrying about their period. In the end Clarity is there for you through it all.
At this point we realized we were getting too illustration-based, and needed to break away from the typical shape language I was using. So, my solution was to create multiple shapes out of torn paper while on campus one day. This created a toolbox for me to use to give myself new options and find shape language I wasn't quite thinking about yet. This helped me generate many new ideas to take the piece to a more shape driven design sense instead of everyone looking the same.
Now we were finally getting somewhere! The designs for our main characters completely different from our original explorations. A breath of fresh air for the project.
The Final Outcome: Motion Design
30 Second Commercial for Clarity
30 Second Commercial for Clarity
Thank you so much for checking out my project!
