Say Her Name
Say Her Name is a campaign design that targets and condemns violence against women. It has a serious, aggressive tone and an intrusive, conspicuous approach. The main idea that stands behind Say Her Name is how drastically the news are suppressed, prevented and manipulated in Turkey, which is where I’m from. More and more women are subject to violence in Turkey, and the cases of murder are reported with increasing numbers every year. However, the government remains significantly inactive in taking action, and even manipulates the news to hide and cover up women murders. "If we can’t trust our governmental bodies and their transparency in
spreading true and accurate information, what do we do?" Say Her Name aims to answer this question. I used both easily distributable mediums such as posters, stickers and also more digital and impactful mediums such as video installations, in this way the campaign will be invading every corner of the streets
and make sure the message is delivered.
I started off with the key elements of the campaign which are posters and stickers.
I put the names of the women that got murdered in Turkey in 2023, referencing the Anıt Sayaç web site as the source. The posters speak loud and clear, and prioritize the names of the women as the information with a purpose to echo their names through the streets and uncover them from the suppressed news. By putting the campaign name "Say Her Name" underneath the poster, repeats the purpose of the poster and raises awareness around the subject in a
fast-fashioned reach.
After the posters, the other key element for the campaign was the sticker. The sticker indicates a very subtle, simple sign of violence, and the campaign suggests this sticker to be sticked to whereever that has been a subject to violence against women. Therefore, if the news are prevented from the public, the public will ensure that no violence remains in the dark with the stickers and mark the places, squares, territories, the narrow streets that violence still takes place.
Posters and stickers work together and invade every street possible. To fend off the very government bodies that strip the public from transparent and accurate news, the public have to utilize these two key elements.
After the posters, the other key element for the campaign was the sticker. The sticker indicates a very subtle, simple sign of violence, and the campaign suggests this sticker to be sticked to whereever that has been a subject to violence against women. Therefore, if the news are prevented from the public, the public will ensure that no violence remains in the dark with the stickers and mark the places, squares, territories, the narrow streets that violence still takes place in.
Posters and stickers work together and invade every street possible. To fend off the very government bodies that strip the public from transparent and accurate news, the public have to utilize these two key elements.
Say Her Name, being a campaign design with an aim to reach out to the general audience and inform mass crowds, must not fall short in its social media influence too. Therefore, I created this video to be released to social media platforms, which has a couple suprising frames (seen on the right) that hijack the screen and add an intimidating point of view to the subject.
The names you see on the screen could've been someone you know closely.
For the last element of the project, I thought of a way to reinforce a safe environment in the streets, and what would've been a way to ensure that with a campaign that can only visually be there. The campaign can't assign guards on the streets, the campaign is practically performing to right the government's wrongs, so what could be the way?
And then I thought of the symbolic meaning of the "eye" and how it can act as a "guard on the watch" in the places it is put. The watchful eye can force its presence into the streets and always remain there to watch out for people with ill intent against women and deter them.
In order to pursuit this idea, I wanted to use my own eye. Therefore I positioned my eye into an eye shaped hole I cut to black colored paper. I frantically looked around in the recording, representing the constant, tireless search of "The Eye" that is to be the new guard of the Say Her Name campaign.
In the 28 second video the eye gets more twisted, corrupted and disturbing as time passes. I wanted to illustrate how this watchful eye will change in look as the day slowly transitions into the night. Starting off from a really standard human eye look, the eye will graudally make its way to a scarier looking version as night steps in.
.jpg)
.jpg)
Say Her Name has been a campaign design that took an initiative on a subject that needed addressing, especially in my home country Turkey. In Turkey, violence against women is not the worst thing, but the prevention and suppression of it is.
I will probably never mark this project as complete, as the wish to expand it to greater deeds will not end within me, at least until Turkey is stripped clean from violence against women.
Therefore, I strongly suggest that campaigns like these should make its way into our lives much louder and much more frequently, and I am proud to see Say Her Name as an example to this.
You may also like
