Shipt’s AAPI Heritage Month Campaign:
Hand in Hand
Art Direction
Marketing Collateral
Brand Identity
Illustration

Role
Lead Designer & Illustrator & Art Director

Year
2022

Separately we’re great, but together we’re a force

The challenge
Celebrating AAPI Heritage Month is to honor and highlight the values and people of our community. We wanted to align with our SAUCE (Shipt AAPI Unity Community Engagement) employee resource group and DEI’s plans on how to activate the month through their ideas and activities. The copy team presents potential campaign themes and the design team creates a design toolkit from the theme that will be used throughout creative activations like social, video, photography as well as other internal events planned for the month.

The solution
I led art direction and created the design toolkit from start to finish that represented the community and could flex into different applications from social to other digital formats. I partnered with a variety of teams such as DEI, SAUCE ERG, content, and our design team to bring this to life.

Ideation
One theme idea was Sharing Our Stories, the power of storytelling through passing down stories of wisdom and culture. Tapestry imagery came to mind as those have been historic in cultures that spoke of the stories through symbols. I liked the idea of weaving together the AAPI diaspora and came up with elements from each region to weave into a bigger piece. In the end, the SAUCE leadership group decided the Hand in Hand campaign theme felt stronger and needed at the time and moved forward with it.

Art direction
Hand in Hand was the chosen theme as it was a fresh take on how we can amplify AAPI voices and stories through a unique lens such as the gesture of cutting fruit. I was inspired by my parent’s labor of love when it comes to cutting fruits. It’s more than just the fruit, it’s their way of showing affection and encouragement without being verbal. I wanted to express this idea within Asian culture through many different fruits from regions all over. The bright palette and shapes implied a playful and warm feeling throughout the month of celebration. The goal was to illustrate the fruits and highlight other forms of unspoken hand gestures in our culture.

Social media + Engagement
We had several social activations centering around the meaning of cut fruit, AAPI-Owned brands, favorite foods, and the meaning of AAPI Heritage Month. The content team partnered with the SAUCE Employee Resource Group on thoughtful activations. We designed a cohesive look through our socials that bled into our ERG events like a fireside chat with Grammy-nominated Michelle Zauner, movie night, and even a Spotify playlist!

Team
Alison Blackwell, Copy Direction
Jasmine Flowers, Copy Direction
Nancy Hu, Lead Designer, Illustrator & Art Direction
Selene Huang, Designer

The results
I was really looking forward to creating this year’s theme that continues to amplify AAPI voices as we still face targeted hate crimes. I’m glad I had the opportunity to partner with other cross-functional teams like DEI, SAUCE ERG, content, and our design team to authentically represent AAPI Heritage Month. It was most rewarding to hear about how SAUCE members resonated with the theme throughout the month.