How can you make your art direction more inclusive?

Don’t just research your target audience - talk to them. Conduct surveys, ask questions, and lead with authentic support for others.

Recognize that no culture is a monolith, when you're casting there's a range of shades that represent a certain demographic. Plus think about the "mise en scene" of the scene, the removed shoes by the door, the stove light left on, the small cultural nods that other people "in" recognize as a nod that the content is speaking directly to them.

Unfortunately, a visually appealing text or art will repel tractions if the first set of engaged target audience struggle to relate it with what matters most to them at the moment. Adequate customer research on why they're using that social or search platform you're about leveraging will unveil to you what resonates with them most. You should only design once you've listened to and understood many of the folks in the audience segment you're targeting.

Before we engage with the employees, we need to understand their real-time challenges, root causes, mindsets, and have FG discussions. This is essential for building a solution-oriented workshop. In addition, the training needs to be delivered as a combination of product and behavioral-oriented training to create awareness and explore their inner core strengths.

Absolutely. It becomes absolutely mandatory in the field of design to understand your TG. If your design is not able to fulfil your audience's needs and preferences, then it's a waste. Research becomes mandatory to know your audience's taste, ease, what they like, what they don't like, etc, etc. We should know their issues while using the product, device, etc.

KISS: Keep it Simple, Silly. Leverage design principles and yet keep the visual language simple, coherent and easy to consume. In the throes of passion, creators often get carried away with the way the content is presented. Ask yourself: It may look great, but is it easy on the eye? Is the hero message the most eye-catching in your concept or is it competing heavily with other components in the larger concept?

One thing I found useful in my work is to play with high contrast between the background and the text. I gravitate towards using one or two main colors and alternating between shades of these colors to create interest. Washed out colors as a background for important text piece is also a great strategy to emphasize the content.

Learn from accessibility WCAG standards. Color should never be the sole indicator of important information. It's too easy for color to be misinterpreted.

I can't iterate this enough. So many of us are known for unnecessarily reinventing the wheel especially when it comes to color schemes and matching hues. A fluid color palette serves no purpose and ideally brands and people-brands per se must spend a minute more than ever to ensure consistency is key.

Every colour speaks and we should understand the psychology of colours and use it appropriately on our canvas. Wrong colours can hurt someone's sentiments.

In an era of commoditized content, generic stock images are an easy way to tell your audience that your content is just another face in the crowd. At the same time, faces do draw people in. People like to look at other people. So unique photography can be a big differentiator, and allow your brand to showcase more faces and voices than what many stock photo sites feature. Consider devoting a small budget to shooting your brand’s own, custom photography. An iPhone is an incredible tool, and I bet your employees already represent a wide swath of backgrounds that would look great captured on film.

Some attributes to consider when choosing diverse images: - Ethnicity (AKA "race") - Age - Size - Physical ability - Gender expression These are just a few. Also include these physical attributes in the alt text you author for the images -- this allows users relying on screen readers to have a more comparable experience to sighted readers. In other words, the physical descriptions in the alt text will communicate the diversity choices to visually-impaired users via screen reader. Finally, if you use couples in your images, make sure to include images where both partners are Black, both partners are Asian, and so on. The overrepresentation of interracial couples to the exclusion of same-race couples not-so-subtly centers whiteness.

Authenticity, yes, please. Always! Diverse culture and ethnic backgrounds must be interspersed to ensure relatability with audiences. ??

It's worth keeping inerrant bias in mind when selecting images from stock sites, or even generating images with AI. For example if we type "A successful business executive" into a google image search, a stock website or even something like midjourney, what do we see? A whole lot of white men. This is because the searches are fed by data that is by it's nature not particularly inclusive. To get around this we need to be making decisions around inclusivity at the human level, not leading it up to the algorithms.

Mindful Design: a. Inclusive Imagery: Use imagery that represents diverse races, ethnicities, genders, abilities, and age groups. Avoid stereotyping or tokenism. b. Representation: Include individuals from underrepresented groups in your visual content without reinforcing harmful narratives or clichés. c. Language and Symbols: Be aware of the linguistic and symbolic nuances associated with different cultures. Avoid the misappropriation of symbols and phrases.

Continuing my thoughts from the previous thread on the use of "colors", correct content emphasis and highlights create better readability in my experience. And speaking of content, text formatting such as bold and italics for right emphasis goes a long way! Additionally, I would not use too many font families in one document/infographic. Clean, minimal text is my go-to! In more tactile environments, such as infographics in museum information plaques next to the displays, I would also focus on placing braille alongside the written material.

Consistent Guidelines: a. Develop clear guidelines on inclusive art direction that are accessible to the entire team. This ensures a consistent approach to inclusivity across projects.

Test for dyslexics! Sure, color contrast, cleaner text, etc. are all helpful, but if you're neurotypical, you probably will see something totally different than someone who is dyslexic. For instance, logos, signs, or incredibly decorative script squished into a shape doesn't look like words to people with dyslexia, it just looks like a neat design with no communicable meaning. If you still want your neat logo with squished letters, consider adding a subtitle or bound lettering to the exterior that repeats the same words/quote inside the design. It will be a functional way for people who see the world through different eyes to understand your design better.

As a YouTuber and podcaster, it is important to have great thumbnails and titles that are CATCHY and ENGAGING. Make them so good people have to stop from scrolling and at least look at it and give it an impression. You will know what the market needs using the analytics to see what videos are performing best and if you have an engaging audience, you can ask them why they like that content and if they would like to see more about topic "X". You can improve thumbnails by testing out different styles and seeing if it ups your click-through-rate. Remember the thumbnails and art is probably THE MOST important element when making videos because it's the first thing people see. The value comes second unfortunately in most cases.

Feedback and Testing: a. User Testing: Collect feedback from diverse user groups through user testing to ensure your visual content resonates positively. b. Iteration: Be willing to iterate on your visual direction based on user and team feedback, making adjustments to be more inclusive.

Making art direction more inclusive means ensuring that a wide range of people, irrespective of their race, gender, age, ability, sexuality, and other identifiers, can see themselves in the art and feel represented and valued. One of the way one can do that: Accessibility: Making sure the art is accessible to people with disability eg using clear fonts, providing all text for image etc also making sure that physical art installation are wheelchair accessible. Inclusion in art direction isn't just about ticking boxes. It's about creating a richer, more comprehensive narrative that respects and celebrates the diversity of human experiences.

Including art should not be seen as a rigid rule but as a way of making the content richer and more engaging for the user. Everything you do must be optimized for the user, it's must be user-focused else we miss the point.

Invite more people to the table! If you want to make sure your content is appealing and applicable to a diverse audience, ensure your creators come from various backgrounds and empower them to speak up during content creation. My intersectional interests and identities help me instinctively flag things that seem "off" to me, and adding more diversity boosts that gut instinct as a team.

A designer should never love his/her design. Don't get me wrong! I am saying this because if a designer falls in love with their design, then it will block their mind from finding issues in their art/design. As we say, there is always a scope for betterment in creative things. We as a community should connect and share each other thoughts. It will help everyone enhance their skills.

Ensure your art is accessible to individuals with disabilities by providing alternative formats and considering their needs in your design.