Working on an ad this week for the Bellevue Schools Foundation and I have had an absolute blast puttering through Adobe’s stock photography to find photos of beautiful children. It was important to me that this project feature children from across the melanin rainbow, both because the program works with a diverse group of children and due to the current moment in the BLM movement I’ve been more acutely aware of accurately representing the diversity of the programs.
In my searching, I found that POC and Black children are not represented as often even in our stock photography. I’ve even found it difficult to find senior photos of the rainbow that our world is simply stuffed with, which gets me percolating again about the things that bring us together and keep us apart.
Something to consider with every project is both our own biases as well as the potential biases of the company or project owners. And as in life, design should strive to be inclusive.
