Interview about No Excuse Cross Brochure, winner of the A' Social Design Award 2025
This cross brochure design is a powerful and innovative tool for raising awareness and promoting action. Its interactive format, bold visuals, and impactful statistics effectively convey the urgency of the issue. By engaging users on a personal level and encouraging participation, the cube serves as a catalyst for change, empowering individuals to become active advocates for women's safety and equality.
View detailed images, specifications, and award details on A' Design Award & Competition website.
View Design DetailsThe conceptual development of the No Excuse Cross Brochure began with a fundamental question: How can we create not just awareness, but genuine emotional engagement with the urgent issue of violence against women? We knew that traditional, static print approaches often fail to inspire meaningful reflection or action.To address this, we designed interactive layers—transparent overlays that the reader physically lifts away—symbolically removing violence from a woman's face. This tangible act is intended to transform the audience from passive observers into active participants in the message. The process of revealing the unmarked image beneath serves as a powerful metaphor for collective responsibility in eliminating violence.We also selected a cross-shaped fold to break from conventional brochure formats and ensure the piece commands attention immediately. The unfolding experience reveals hard-hitting statistics and direct calls to action, encouraging the reader to confront the scale and gravity of the problem. Overall, the concept was carefully developed to provoke thought, invite empathy, and ultimately mobilize individuals to become part of the movement against gender-based violence.
Our research process revealed the sheer scale and severity of gender-based violence, underscored by devastating statistics like "137 women killed daily by family members." We knew these numbers were essential to communicate the urgency of the issue, but presenting them required a careful balance between impact and sensitivity.We approached this by prioritizing clarity and directness in the text—using simple, bold typography that refused to soften the message or allow it to be ignored. At the same time, we avoided sensationalism, ensuring the statistics were presented as solemn facts demanding reflection, not shock for its own sake.The interactive, cross-shaped fold and layered design structure were developed to guide readers through these challenging truths step by step. By asking them to engage physically with the brochure—unfolding panels and removing overlays—they confront the data in a more personal, deliberate way. This approach aimed to create space for empathy and thoughtfulness, transforming raw statistics into a call for collective responsibility and meaningful action.
The dimensional design of the No Excuse Cross Brochure was carefully planned to balance portability with dramatic visual impact. When closed at 12.3x12.5cm, it remains compact and approachable—inviting the reader to pick it up without feeling overwhelmed. This portability was essential for ensuring broad distribution and easy storage while maintaining a sense of personal, intimate engagement.When unfolded to 37x36cm, the cross-shaped layout transforms into a powerful, commanding visual statement that can’t be ignored. This large open format provided us with ample space to deliver challenging statistics, impactful imagery, and layered messaging in a way that feels immersive and deliberate. The unfolding experience was designed to guide the reader through a journey—revealing information step by step, mirroring the process of confronting and addressing the issue of violence.Ultimately, these specific proportions were chosen to enhance user interaction, encouraging reflection and participation while delivering a strong, clear message that demands attention and empathy.
Incorporating personalized name tags into the No Excuse Cross Brochure was a deliberate strategy to transform a generalized message into an intimate, personal call to action. By addressing each recipient by name, we aimed to break the sense of detachment that often surrounds social awareness campaigns. Instead of being a passive observer, the reader is immediately positioned as an involved participant in the fight against violence toward women.This individualization strategy significantly enhanced engagement and response. Recipients reported feeling personally addressed and more compelled to reflect on the issue and share the message with others. The use of the name created a sense of ownership and responsibility, making the act of reading the brochure feel less like consuming information and more like accepting an invitation to join a movement.By making the experience personal, we sought to build empathy, drive conversation, and encourage real-world action. It reinforced the idea that ending violence against women is not an abstract goal for "someone else" to solve, but a collective responsibility that begins with each of us.
Our choice to combine traditional paper with transparent gelatine overlays was driven by the desire to create a tactile, interactive experience that embodied the brochure’s core message. We wanted to go beyond static print and transform the act of reading into a physical metaphor for confronting and removing violence.The transparent gelatine layers featured graphic representations of violence—both physical and verbal—superimposed on a woman’s face. As the reader lifts each overlay, these symbols of harm are literally peeled away, revealing the unmarked image beneath. This material choice wasn’t just aesthetic; it was conceptual, designed to evoke the layered, persistent nature of gender-based violence while offering a tangible action that symbolizes its removal.By engaging multiple senses and requiring active participation, the materials reinforce the idea that ending violence is not passive—it demands awareness, empathy, and involvement. This deliberate, tactile interaction was essential to making the message unforgettable and encouraging the reader to reflect on their own role in driving change.
Receiving an Iron A' Design Award in Social Design is a significant honor that we hope will greatly amplify the core message of the No Excuse Cross Brochure. This recognition not only validates our approach but also increases its visibility, helping to bring the urgent issue of violence against women to a broader, more global audience.The award serves as a powerful endorsement that can attract new partners, advocates, and organizations interested in adopting or adapting similar participatory, design-driven methods for social change. We envision this visibility sparking dialogue about the role of design in tackling critical societal issues, inspiring others to experiment with bold, interactive communication strategies that move people from awareness to action.Most importantly, we hope this recognition helps to sustain momentum around the fight against gender-based violence by keeping it in the public eye and encouraging collective responsibility. Our goal is not just to inform, but to mobilize—and this award is a meaningful step toward achieving that mission.
The decision to use a bold visual language combined with straightforward, unflinching text was rooted in our core objective: to create a piece that simply could not be ignored. Violence against women is often a hidden, minimized issue, and we felt a responsibility to confront audiences with its stark reality in a way that demanded attention and reflection.Our design process involved careful balancing. We wanted to be direct and impactful without sensationalizing the trauma of survivors. This meant using clean, bold typography and striking imagery to communicate urgency, while maintaining respect and sensitivity for the subject matter. The raw statistics were presented plainly to ensure their gravity couldn’t be softened or dismissed.Ultimately, these choices were intended to break through the noise of traditional advocacy materials and engage viewers in a meaningful way. By refusing to allow the problem to be ignored or minimized, we aimed to provoke conversation, build empathy, and inspire real-world action—transforming the brochure from an informational tool into a catalyst for social change.
The wearable ribbon element was inspired by our belief that awareness campaigns need to move beyond passive consumption and invite real, personal commitment. We chose the internationally recognized white ribbon with an orange heart—the color of the global movement for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women—to create an immediate, powerful connection to the broader cause.By including a wearable element in the brochure, we aimed to transform readers into active participants. It offers them a simple yet meaningful way to publicly show their support, signaling solidarity and sparking conversations in their communities. Wearing the ribbon isn't just a gesture; it's a personal declaration against violence, helping to break the silence that so often surrounds this issue.This interactive component has been instrumental in building a sense of shared purpose and community. Recipients have described feeling more connected to the cause and motivated to spread the message further. In this way, the ribbon helps move the brochure from being an isolated communication tool to a catalyst for collective action and lasting social impact.
Working with Adobe Creative Suite was essential to effectively translating such a sensitive and complex subject into a compelling, respectful design. The suite’s robust tools allowed us to precisely craft layered compositions, especially the transparent overlays that symbolically remove violence from a woman's face. By managing these layers digitally, we could experiment with opacity, alignment, and sequencing to ensure the symbolic gesture was clear and impactful without feeling exploitative.Adobe InDesign and Illustrator also enabled us to perfect the cross-shaped folding structure and plan how the content would unfold in the reader’s hands, guiding them through a deliberate storytelling journey. Careful typography and color management ensured that crucial statistics were both legible and appropriately emphasized, striking a balance between urgency and sensitivity.Additionally, using these digital tools allowed us to maintain production accuracy, test multiple prototypes virtually, and collaborate closely with our print partners to ensure that the final piece met our ethical and aesthetic standards. Ultimately, Adobe Creative Suite empowered us to deliver a design that communicated a difficult message thoughtfully, while encouraging meaningful reflection and action.
Measuring the real-world impact of the No Excuse Cross Brochure goes beyond traditional metrics; it's about gauging its ability to provoke thought, start conversations, and inspire action. We've received direct feedback from recipients who described feeling personally addressed by the individualized name tags and moved to share the message with friends, family, and colleagues. The inclusion of the wearable ribbon encouraged them to publicly declare their stance, transforming private reflection into visible advocacy.We also observed the brochure's success in sparking dialogue within communities and organizations, making a typically uncomfortable topic impossible to ignore. This qualitative impact—measured through engagement, discussions, and requests for additional copies—demonstrated that design can function as a catalyst for social change when it invites participation rather than passive consumption.The biggest insight for future campaigns is the power of interactivity and personalization in driving awareness and empathy. Effective advocacy design must respect the gravity of its subject while empowering individuals to see their role in change. Moving forward, we'll continue to explore ways to merge clear, compelling messaging with engaging formats that transform awareness into meaningful, collective action.
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