ans:wer is a platform for agencies, companies, freelancers and in‐house communication teams who want to work towards advertising and communication that’s free of sexism and discrimination. From the website (translated from the German):

We founded this organization because, as communicators, we have a responsibility. We don't just show the world as it is—we also show it as it could be. Our work shapes images, language, perceptions, and realities. This is where we come in!
Because: Women, queer people, and many other marginalized groups are still forced into restrictive, stereotypical roles in advertising—if they are even visible at all.
We want to change that. With conviction, expertise, and a clear feminist perspective.

Visuals designed by P&B Agentur für Kommunikation from Vienna, using the typefaces Spektra by Type Salon, Milla by Vivian Dehning, and Inclusive Sans by Olivia King.

Postcard showing Milky Well on a bouncy baseline

A set of four postcards advertising Retread Threads, a clothing store which was located in Portland, Oregon, until its closure in 2003. The cards were created by Seattle ad agency Cole & Weber United, with Greg Wyatt as art director, Jonathan Ozer as copywriter, and illustrations by now-defunct Japanese company Furi Furi Co.

The dialogue on the postcards uses Kotaroh Hatano's Milky Well, Toshiyuki Takahashi's Pop Magic, and in one case, ITC Bauhaus. Pop Magic is also used for the small text at the bottom of the postcards.

The Retread Threads logo uses Adrenalin Bubble.

Postcard showing Milky Well with a modified uppercase W

Another version of the above, this time showing Pop Magic. The uppercase W and the lowercase i, m and n have been modified; the uppercase Y is actually a lowercase y raised to the baseline; and the uppercase N is borrowed from Milky Well (and modified).

Postcard showing Pop Magic with a modified uppercase H and G

Postcard showing ITC Bauhaus

Another version of the above, this time showing Pop Magic. The uppercase B and W and the lowercase m, n and v have been modified.

Poster for the exhibition The F*room. From MK&G Freiraum (translated):

The open space of the MK&G becomes The F*room – young designers from HAW Hamburg use this place of dialog to position themselves in the discourse with their own intersectional design positions and critical food for thought. Inspired by the current exhibition The F*word – Guerrilla Girls and Feminist Graphic Design, the students have worked on surprisingly personal and yet universal questions: How do I discuss gender issues at the dinner table? How many sexist jokes does the public broadcaster want to air? How do we create space in the archive for a diverse collection? How can we create safe(r) spaces to celebrate? How beautiful can a cycle actually be? How do we ensure productive discord? […]

A project by communication designers from HAW Hamburg in the course “Annoying, too loud, too messy”, supervised by Prof. Heike Grebin and Lea Sievertsen. Funded by the Claussen-Simon-Fonds für Wissenschaft & Hochschule.

When you go for kinky but marketing can’t read it.

The cover designer of The Marquis de Sade chose the equally charged and funky Fette Fraktur for the title. The S, however, is from a different blackletter typeface: it’s Old English, a textura with more ecclesiastical associations. The problem with Fette Fraktur’s snake-like S is that too many readers mistake it for a G. See also this alternative approach to the same challenge, likewise from 1970s Britain.

This NEL paperback contains Simone de Beauvoir’s 1953 feminist essay Faut-il brûler Sade ? (English: Must We Burn Sade?), translated from the French by Annette Michelson, with selections from Sade’s writings chosen and translated by Paul Dinnage.

Fette Fraktur (top) compared to Old English (bottom)

Instagram posts

Viol-Secour is a feminist association founded in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1985. Its purpose is to fight sexual violence against female, trans, non-binary and intersexual humans. They offer help to victims, for example in the form of psycho-social assistance and art therapy that is free of charge. On the other hand they work in prevention, organizing interventions in institutions, preparing modules of education and conceiving campaigns to raise public awareness.

Abus de Pouvoir (“Abuse of Power”) is an example for such a campaign. Its focus lies on sexual abuse committed by professionals in the health sector. The campaign was translated into three communication media conceived by Mélanie Glayre and designed by Vanessa Cojocaru who joined in 2021 under the label Norma in Fribourg, Switzerland. In this post you see the small-size foldout Petit guide pratique (“Little practical guide”), the 60-page brochure in A5 format, and Instagram tiles. What defines the visual identity of the campaign are three carefully chosen and recognizable tones of green, red, and purple – and the display typeface: Signal Compressed by Production Type.

Published in 2018, Signal Compressed was designed by Emmanuel Besse and draws its inspiration from urban road lettering in France. It was the first style of what today constitutes the Signal Collection: in 2019 it was extended with Signal and in 2020 with Signal Mono. While Signal Compressed is a single child, the other two branches are in fact families with eight styles including Cyrillics.

The second font in this project is the sans-serif Inter by Rasmus Andersson. It was used to set the texts for continuous reading.

Announcement of a round table discussion and the launch of the brochure

Petit guide pratique

Brochure cover

PREY – Über Macht und Ausbeutung / Vol. 1 Prostitution und Sexarbeit (“PREY - On Power and Exploitation / Vol. 1 Prostitution and Sex Work”) is the final student work by Lena Riszdorfer and Feline Skowronek as part of their communication design course at the Deutsche Meisterschule für Mode | Designschule München. It is the first volume of a magazine focused on the subject of power and exploitation. It addresses the issue of prostitution and sex work, particularly in light of modern feminism.

The magazine views the topic from different perspectives: the complexity and controversy demands a clear, intensive and delicate treatment. The design of the magazine reflects this in its treatment of layout, colour, type and imagery: the tension between anonymity and intimacy is dealt through the subtle use of handwritten elements. The handlettering is complemented by clear and legible typography: the typeface family in use is LD Grotesk by Kai Büschl / Lazydogs Typefoundry.

Cover of 1975 Pearchild Productions edition

In a February 2023 interview with James Edmondson for Ohno Radio, Carolyn Minott, granddaughter of Davida designer, Louis Minott, identified this cover as her favorite use of the typeface. She found it in a Portland bookstore and was amused at imagining her grandfather, who used very proper language, seeing his type on such an explicit book.

First published in 1975 by lesbian activist and artist Tee Corinne, the Cunt Coloring Book was created as a resource for sex education. The book was reprinted by Last Gasp in 1989, adding French, German, and Spanish translations.

“In 1973 I set out to do drawings of women’s genitals for use in sex education groups. I wanted the drawings to be lovely and informative, to give pleasure and affirmation. I organized the drawings into a coloring book because a major way we learn to understand the world, as children, is by coloring. As adults many of us still need to learn about our external sexual anatomy.” —Tee Corinne

In addition to Davida, the book’s labels and headlines appear to use dry transfer lettering in Arnold Böcklin and an unidentified sans serif (perhaps a knockoff ITC Avant Garde Gothic Condensed?), with an introduction set on a typewriter using a Cubic style.

First spread of 1975 Pearchild Productions edition

Cover of 1989 Last Gasp edition

item (Independent platform for the Transfer of Educational impulses via a student Magazine) is the student magazine of the Department of Design and Culture at HTW Berlin.

In the fourth issue, the students explored the topic of “strip,” thereby breaking barriers, questioning privilege, and addressing subjects such as body positivity, diversity, sex work, and social norms.

Is love for sale or is noncommittal sex the new ideal? Are people whose bodies don’t conform to the norm included in fantasies and behaviors of the majority? Why, even in 2022, are feelings still interpreted as obstacles and femininity as weakness?

Questions like these were tackled in this issue and exciting people, such as Ivana Vladislava, Annabelle Ferlings, Yanis Berrewaerts and Fritzi Krafczyk, shared their thoughts with us.

In addition, 19 projects by students from the Department of Design and Culture are featured in this year’s issue and provide an interesting insight into the recent semesters at university. The magazine was founded, conceived, designed, and introduced by Sally Paschmann and is intended to provide insights into the debates, thoughts, impulses, and projects that arise during the course of studies. It provides a platform for students to introduce themselves and their projects and to consider their work in a socially relevant context.

Publisher: HTW Berlin, Department of Design and Culture
Founding and supervision: Sally Paschmann
Editing: Coco Nova Estèle Schätzke, Emilia Moro, Eli Zaza Moysiopoulou, Dylan Demtröder, Aylin Eryilmaz, Luzie Drawe
Design: Al Ayaasha Medford, Alexandra Trinkl, Camille Baumann, Ella MacWilliams, Florencia Ramirez, Mani Pham Bui

Perverted Norm, Normal Pervert is a project by artist Kuang-Yi Ku. Inspired by scientific research, it explores the normality and abnormality of sexual activities among humans and snails.

This bilingual book focuses on gender fluidity, depicting the reproductive system, reproductive structure, and mating posture of snails and humans in four chapters with black and white illustrations. On the cover, it attempts to echo the definition of “pervert and normality” explored by the artist by switching the sequence of the Chinese characters “變態的正常.”

The title and the running texts are set in Neue Machina by Pangram Pangram, and Chinese texts are set in Source Han Sans TC.

Source: www.urbanoutfitters.com Photo: Urban Outfitters. License: All Rights Reserved.

WOMXN: Sticks and Stones is a book written by Lexy Wren-Sillevis and illustrated by Margaux Carpentier. From the publisher:

“There are so many words, insults, labels and boxes for women to be packaged and packed off in. Often, but not always, they’re words coined by men.”
Why that is, is a bigger conversation that is starting to be had by women everywhere. We’re slowly, but oh-so-surely, making it clear that there is no man in womxn. We’re writing him out and writing us back in, and we deserve a suffix all of our own that is free from patriarchal roots. So from here on in, we are WOMXN.

Sticks and Stones is a powerful reclamation of the slurs and insults thrown at women for centuries. It’s a righting of wrongs – a rewriting of sexist, belittling and shaming language. It’s a tool for breaking free from the stereotypes and impossible standards used to confine women, transforming them into messages of resilience and resolve. And, most importantly, it’s a rallying call for change, healing and empowerment.

It takes the words, slurs, insults and labels that are used to diminish women every day and breaks them down and tears them apart. It transmutes and rewrites these words – sometimes with all of the pain they trigger, sometimes in the form of positive affirmations, mantras and poems – all told in acrostics.

Source: www.urbanoutfitters.com Photo: Urban Outfitters. License: All Rights Reserved.

The cover was designed by Evi O. Studio and the interior by Hannah Coughlin at Pyramid. The typeface chosen for the title as well as for the reclaimed slurs and insults is Vulture. Drawn by Ellmer Stefan for his Pyte Foundry in 2016, this all-caps design is “wrong” in terms of contrast: conventionally thick letter parts here are thin, and vice versa. Vulture brings together various 19th-century influences: the reversed contrast of Caslon’s Italian is married to the trumpet-shaped flare serifs of faces like Athenian. In his review for Typographica, Frank Grießhammer commented: “This design satisfies voyeuristic tendencies; it feels like I’m seeing something I shouldn’t be looking at.”

The play with broken conventions is taken to extremes on the cover: With the stacked letters, the title “WOMXN” looks as if it was mirrored. This vertical arrangment works less smoothly for the initial letters of the acrostics. Especially the thin I lacks presence and doesn’t lend itself to vertical reading – it only really performs well in the context of a (horizontal) word image. Vulture is paired with Lexia, a low-contrast slab with humanist proportions that provides a strong contrast. The spelled-out words are repeated to the left of the poems. Here they are cleverly set rotated, and hence aren’t instantly graspable – like the solution to a riddle.

Source: www.urbanoutfitters.com Photo: Urban Outfitters. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.urbanoutfitters.com Photo: Urban Outfitters. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.booktopia.com.au Pyramid. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.booktopia.com.au Pyramid. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.booktopia.com.au Pyramid. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.booktopia.com.au Pyramid. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.booktopia.com.au Pyramid. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.booktopia.com.au Pyramid. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.urbanoutfitters.com Photo: Urban Outfitters. License: All Rights Reserved.

Offset Mono Grotesk and Slanted by Giuseppe Tangaro, used together with FK Grotesk by Florian Karsten, for Morte da Vénus (“Death of Venus”), a zine realized by Sofia Noronha.

From the author:

The Rife Magazine open call lead me to a new challenge where I had to question my role in society as a woman and as part of the LGBTQ+ community. Trying to figure out why women normalize harassment questioning structural sexism in society I came up with this project that aims to visually explore women in the “modern” world.

Morte da Vénus is an experimental zine that shows my personal experience as a Portuguese woman living in a time where the far-right side of Portugal takes a toll on our daily life inciting sexism and homophobia. The project is based on Botticelli’s painting The Birth of Venus and comes up as result of a deconstruction, questioning the role of women in society and readapting the Renaissance painting to the current values using elements from Botticelli’s work such as flowers, fabric, shells, water and Venus, the woman herself. The zine adapts to a “do not disturb” door handle and the written content corresponds to some sexist and homophobic comments I found online as well as a few ideas from the far-right parties in Portugal, disturbing ones.

Sexism is not ok, homophobia is not ok. We do not live in a bubble and we need to learn and respect one another and stop raising scared women.

Come Out! was the first periodical published by the gay and lesbian community after the Stonewall riots in June, 1969. The Gay Liberation Front, one of the first militant activist gay rights organizations birthed by the riots, published Come Out! from their base in New York City. — outhistory.org

COME OUT is published by a collection of Radical Gay women and men which holds open contributors’ meetings on Monday nights. Everyone is encouraged to attend, and to submit articles, features, artwork, ideas and criticism. As we go to press, the hour and location of open meetings are unknown. — Come Out! Vol. 1 No. 5

Sample on view in Love & Resistance: Stonewall 50 at the New York Public Library, February 14 – July 14, 2019.

A spread from the same newspaper, scanned and made available as a pdf through outhistory.org .

87% of Egyptian women aged between 15 and 49 are circumcised. Source: UNICEF global databases, 2016. Based on DHS, MICS and other national representative surveys, 2004–2015.

Multilingual poster series by Darius Gondor. Copywriting/text by Salma Khaled Abou-Aisha.

The Silence=Death poster is one of the most iconic pieces of design to come from the LGBTQ movement in modern history. I'm far from the best, or for that matter the right, person to tell this story. But thankfully, creator Avram Finkelstein has written up a brilliant post recounting the story on the NYPL website:

We started a men's consciousness raising group that met every week, loosely assembled around feminist organizing principles. We began each session by talking about our personal fears in the age of AIDS, but by the end of every meeting we were talking about the political crisis that was forming. I knew we couldn't be the only ones who saw it.

And then I remembered: when New Yorkers need to talk to one another, there is always the street.

So I proposed we do a poster. [...]

We realized any single photographic image would be exclusionary in terms of race, gender and class and opted instead to activate the LGBTQ audience through queer iconography. So we reviewed the symbols already in use. We felt the rainbow flag lacked gravitas. The Labrys might not be discernable to gay men. The Lambda had class connotations.

And while we initially rejected the pink triangle because of its links to the Nazi concentration camps, we eventually returned to it for the same reason, inverting the triangle as a gesture of a disavowal of victimhood.

It took us 6 months to finalize Silence=Death. We argued about issues, images and fonts. We pored over press clippings and source material. We studied the work of other collectives, like the Guerrilla Girls, who managed to compact complex messages into smooth one-liners.

We put the poster to bed in December of 1986. We started wheat pasting it in February of 1987, just weeks before the formation of the AIDS activist organization, ACT UP. We hoped the poster might stimulate some kind of collective action. But we were unprepared for what was actually coming.

The font they finally settled on was Gill Sans Bold Extra Condensed, a today often overlooked part of the Gill family that did not receive the remaster treatment of its kin. With an almost flared, upright cursive lowercase it is an oddball, but in an all caps treatment like this, that oddball has the most powerful voice in the whole world.