AAPIHM 2021

Jul 25

AAPIers contribute in a big way to US culture – everything from art, music, food, and fashion. But the AAPI community are not truly celebrated. And not given the voice to be truly heard when the community needs it the most. The AAPI experience comes with a constant dual identity. Dreams to do something different and pressure to appease parents. Eastern sensibilities meet Western attitude. Most of the time the identities are at odds, but that's what makes our experience so unique.

We had two goals with this campaign: celebrate AAPI contributions to American culture and support the AAPI community during this difficult time and amplify their voices. Our hope is to do this by spotlighting AAPI music and podcaster voices to share their resilience and take a firm stance that AAPIers are a part of American culture.

When we audited our past AAPIHM campaign, we saw a common thread of colorful visuals that celebrate the rich culture of the Asian diaspora. We wanted to carry that thread into this year’s vis while striking a balance between playful and thoughtful visual impact. We developed a rich, dimensional design system that could center creators from many different backgrounds. Key design elements include our custom typeface, “Heritage,” custom chrome 3D objects, and bespoke icons, all of which pull inspiration from a breadth of Asian scripts, icons and patterns. And to top it off, we built flexible guidelines to enable markets to localize this work and spread the message of solidarity and support.

This project was done with an incredible team: Kathy Cho, Bridget Kyeremateng, Midori McSwain, Katie Greichen, Karen Chang, Ava Abdoulah, Edward Yeung, Shivani Parasnis, Will Oswin, Rajeev Basu, Lauren Solomon, Alexander Bodman, Lauren Siegal Wurgaft, Cherise Bernard, Marian Dicus, Danielle Aprea, Ronny Ho, Greg Herman, Gabriel Chemin, Dayna Tran, Chantelle Young, Lucy Davidson, Eunu Song, Chris Hill, Kate Griffin, Sidra Ahmad, Priscilla Chan, Jason Miguel, Soy Kim, Robert Guo, Eda Yu, Tamika Young, TK Breuer, Ali Zeren, and everyone from SPACE and Desi.