Women's Conference: Getting Beyond the Stereotypes

I designed promotion for InterVarsity's Women's Conference, that I'm planning to attend this weekend! There was alot of back and forth, trying to find an image that appeals to strong women. Frankly, it's hard to say 'women's' without all the clichés of pink and purple and swirls and flowers. (Or putting an actual woman, since we didn't want to communicate a particular ethnicity, age or body-type.)

In trying to avoid the pure women = pretty pretty princesses idea, the client put forth using red heels on the side of the road. A women who's left her constraints (the heels) behind to start a new journey, she said. Great concept! The problem is, we then veer into the other unwanted stereotypes of women: the prostitute, or the victim. Red heels on the side of the road? Has someone been kidnapped? How do we portray the idea of strong, grown-up, godly women?

Eventually, we settled on using great vintage suitcase with the themes of the conference as travel stickers, to get the idea of journey, of following your call. Even then, we struggled to find an image with the right road--one that would be green and inviting with possibilities. And we needed the right perspective and size, looking ahead into the distance but seeing the suitcase and stickers clearly. We ended up buying a suitcase and doing the photo shoot ourselves... in brown, drab, icy, Wisconsin March. Uh-oh.

Photoshop skills to the rescue! Photoshop doesn't mean I can do anything, but I was relieved to find I could make spring come sooner. After a long process we got something fun, evocative and (hopefully) appealing to lots of women. It takes a lot of work to look this good: