Enjoy these fabulous typography creations supporting IWD Day 2021

 February 14, 2021

It is thrilling to enjoy three of the best IWD 2021 Typography creations from collaboration with the Typism community. 

Each year, the International Women's Day Women Creatives Mission sees women typographers from around the wide create exciting themed creations they share across social media. Their efforts help raise awareness about women's equality while also providing an important opportunity for leveraging visibility of their work and talent for commercial commissions. 

Stay tuned as soon we'll be featuring further information below about what inspired the creativity of thesethree wpomen and what the #ChooseToChallenge means to them. 

Alison Evans says every day should be women's day

@artsyalisondesigns

Alison Evans is from Sacramento in California, USA and her design focuses on challenging and calling out gender bias and inequity. " I love the empowerment in the message and knew I had to create something that not only celebrates the day, but shows solidarity with the mission," she says.

"I like to serve up positive, uplifting art with a side of feminism and pop culture. The main focus of my work is based on my own personal experiences with mental health, feminism and being raised by the television screen. While most of my work is focused on illustration, my main inspiration and motivation is typography, lettering and calligraphy." 

"My concept behind my IWD design is that I really wanted to embody the celebration of women's achievements and promote a sense of inclusion and togetherness. Hands are something I gravitate towards illustrating, so I thought that holding hands would be a perfect depiction of that idea. I also wanted to incorporate the international symbol for women, and decided to include that with the background pattern."

"For the process, the program I use for all of my lettering/typography/illustration is Procreate. I started with the message: 'Happy International Women's Day' and decided I wanted to have that as the biggest element in the design. I sketched the lettering out first and realized that I had a blank spot underneath the lettering portion. As mentioned, I enjoy drawing hands so I thought this would be a perfect addition to the design at the bottom. I sketched those until they fit how I wanted them to, then went back and lettered the writing, and designed the ribbon-like texture to it. After that, I finalized the hands and colored them in. I always have a problem selecting colors, so that part took a long time, but I finally settled on a darker background so that the messaging popped."

"When it comes to IWD, I believe that as a society we need to celebrate women's successes and stand up for gender parity in every aspect of life. Although I would love if everyday could be International Women's Day, it is nice that we can set aside one day where we can focus our efforts on raising awareness about equality and come together for a common cause to celebrate the achievements the world has made in the goal of gender equity and inclusion."
 

Anne's work focuses on humanity

@lettersbyanne

Anne Gvozdjak is a high school senior student from the USA with academic interests spanning mathematics, biology, and computing who enjoys poetry and hand lettering in her free time. She is a humanities-loving stem student who also enjoys blogging about happiness, boredom, and adaptability - addressing these elements via her writing, designs, and thoughts. She has a love for unique stories, quirky word patterns, and lowercase letters and has been lettering as a hobby for many years and one day hopes to turn her talent into a freelance project of her own.

"My design was inspired by the idea that the queen is the most powerful piece on the chessboard. However, rather than pitting queens against one another in black and white, I wanted to emphasize a nature of collaboration and collective empowerment: thus, while the grayscale pattern of the looping letters reflects the chess theme, all the queens are the same deep, red color. I start all my designs with a pencil sketch. When I’m finished making adjustments, I scan the image and do my digital lettering in Autodesk Sketchbook and Adobe Photoshop."

"I think it is incredible to watch individuals break gender stereotypes in lettering style and color palette. Typography’s subtle but ubiquitous presence in the world makes it all the more important for women to take on great projects and be confident in the value of their work. To me, International Women’s Day is a day to celebrate obstacles women have overcome and mark the achievements they have dedicated their lives to. It reminds me of the beautiful community I’m part of, from members of my family to heroes in history."

Magali's birthday falls on IWD

@onirographica

Magali is keen to celebrate women's achievements and raise awareness about equality through supporting International Women's Day - especially as the day is twice as important for her because it coincides with her birthday - the day she was born a feminist!

Magali is a self-taught French artist in Luxembourg specializing in drawing letters and making compositions by mixing lettering and illustration to decorate slates and easels, windows, walls, cards, and more. She likes to draw letters that convey positivity and inspiration. her work usually includes intricate patterns, delicate curvy lines and dream-like elements - ranging from embellishing chalkboards for cafes and restaurants, decorating shop windows or painting murals to graphic design commissions where lettering and illustration are key.

"I wanted this piece to be both refined and strong in order to reflect the complexity of what women can be. That is why I created contrast between bold serif letters and delicate flourishes, between textured shadowed letters and raw sketchy background. The yellow petals surrounding the flowers on the pattern can be seen as flames that underline the power of the feminine. My process was a little bit different than usual for this piece. I started by putting together the color palette and background pattern, which I had created for a past artwork as part of the #100daysoflettering challenge. Once I had an overall frame for the lettering, I made a lot of sketches, aiming at finding a simple composition that would nicely fill the space and make the word women being the center of attention. I drew the letterforms so they would be easily readable yet ornate and added textures and shadows to make the letters pop." 

"International Women’s Day is one of these celebrations that I would love to be unnecessary in our times. But as long as one of our sisters is denied any opportunity or right just because she was born a woman, this day will be of utmost importance. It is very delightful to see so many women making it in lettering and art in general. My inspirations include many female artists like Lauren Hom, Gemma O’Brien, Martina Flor or Lisa Quine, only to name a few. Seeing more women thriving in this artform is very empowering."

When Magali is not drawing you can find her at home in front of the screen translating or writing, in the kitchen concocting vegetarian recipes with a glass of wine, or playing sports or getting lost in nature with her backpack and camera.