Creating an Aesthetic for Disabled Collective
In the beginning of the course, each team member talked about what they were excited to do. There seemed to be a common theme among us: we were all looking forward to contributing to the important causes and organizations which would be involved in the Beautiful Social course this semester. With the Disabled Collective, that’s exactly what we did. We worked with Rachel Cheang, project coordinator, to jumpstart their editorial campaign for disabled students in higher education.
Our first task was to get to the roots of their mission. “Our Crip Notes”, an editorial collaboration between Creating Accessible Neighbourhoods and the Higher Education Crip Collective, centers on disability stories in the hopes to expand disability awareness, dismantle disability stigmas and misconceptions, amplify the voices of disabled students. These efforts help show the importance of disability for diversity, equity and inclusion. The editorial called for artwork submissions that discussed the experiences of disabled students in higher education.
Once we were aware of the Collective’s mission, it soon became clear to us what we had to do: form an Instagram page for the Collective, as well as incorporate the elements of Instagram into their website. This allowed us to pause and think about what it takes to start a social media page. Questions we asked ourselves included:
What should the posts of the Instagram page look like?
What kind of aesthetic should the page have?
How do we narrow in on said aesthetic, including
fonts/colors/images/etc to choose from?
How do we include the Collective’s theme of “soup” into our work?
It was necessary to ask and answer all these questions if we wanted to create a successful and pleasing identity for Disabled Collective. In order to fully address these questions, our group decided it was important to create a mood board. This mood board would serve as a source of inspiration for us as we continued on with our work for the Collective this semester. It’s purpose is to drive us towards a cohesive and visually pleasing aesthetic that we could refer back to when creating the Instagram and website.
Elements such as font, color, symbols, images, etc. were all included in the creation of our mood board. For example, many “pins” exist that layout specific fonts that look pleasing on an Instagram page. The same exists for colors that look good on any feed due to their ability to draw viewers in and effectively communicate a company and/or organization’s message. Members of our group joined a collaborative Pinterest board and each contributed numerous pins that they felt helped add to possible aesthetics we wanted the Collective to have.
After we added pins and started to get a sense of what aesthetic we were going for, it was time to share what we had created! As part of our takeover for the Beautiful Social Instagram account, we knew how important it was to share what we’d accomplished on our Pinterest board. In order to really show off all the work we had done, our group created a graphic that capitalized on the work we had done.
Following the colors and aesthetic of the @bsocialsju Instagram account, we uploaded this picture:
along with a caption describing the creative process we used to complete our mood board. We found it important to share our Pinterest board because it encapsulates not just what we’ve done this semester, but the overall aesthetic and vibe we’ve decided to focus on for the Collective’s online presence.
By laying down the foundations of the aesthetics at the beginning of our process, we have been able to further expand upon our vision for Disabled Collective as we continue to embark on the creation of their Instagram page as well as their website. We hope to further our creative process by taking these creations and incorporating them into our continued work for Disabled Collective. Establishing simple design basics such as font and color has been extremely beneficial to us as we further plan out our work for the rest of the semester.
