The “Minas” from Minas — Explaining the visual identity of Ladies That UX Uberlândia
- Minas is a common term for young women in Brazil, short term for girls.
2020 arrived busting through the door and Ladies That UX Uberlândia decided, still in January, to change the look. We made a post about the change as soon as we launched the visual identity on our instagram, but we liked the creation process so much that we decided to share a little more of our inspirations with you.
As a way to celebrate the 6 months anniversary of the implementation of the new visual identity, we came to explain a little bit about the concepts that were part of the briefing, as same as the realities in the universe of the Triângulo Mineiro — our region in Minas Gerais.
Let’s go! ❤
New interpretations for everyday women
The briefing for the project came up with the idea of bringing a more dynamic image of women to online reality. We wanted to show not only femininity but also sensuality, power, strength, in short, all the attributes that make up real women, with real meaning.
“Take good care of yourself and try to understand that you are capable of being happy.”
Fernanda Takai. — singer from Minas Gerais
It was important for us, in the context of regionality, that we’d also take into account our local identity. Customs, clothes, parties, food, fauna and flora typical of the region in which we live — our Minas Gerais and our most beloved Triângulo Mineiro.
With that, we brainstormed (or made a “toró de ideias”, as we say around here) looking for meanings for items that represented the idea that we would like to pass on — “what is it like to be a lady that UX from Triângulo Mineiro?”. The result was very rich, and we found several ideas that we could explore with greater ownership later on.
We also asked for our ladies opinion!
By the time of the construction of our visual identity, we shared a document with our brainstorm to our community so that we could classify some words that we could emphasize and ask for suggestions of new terms for what they identified as things that defined “ladies that UX Uberlândia”. We had some pretty cool results that we hadn’t thought of before. We selected some and started to think a about the approach we wanted to pursue.
Women from Minas: references and inspirations
We also seeked to do a research on our local women: writers, researchers, celebrities, historical figures and we discover many sensational women who helped to build our identity as a region. Women like Helena Greco, Maria Carolina de Jesus and Dona Beja, who contributed a lot to this process of identity construction, and were honored in March on our Instagram. If you are curious, just click on the name of these women and find out a little more about their history! (posts in brazilian portuguese)
“The ability to be indignant. The value of not accepting inequities and of not seeing violence as trivialities. ”
Helena Greco — Human rights activist from Belo Horizonte — MG
Femininity beyond pink
There is no color that more defines the female gender than pink in the contemporary, that’s a fact. However, there’s a giant spectrum of other colors that can provide us with the same feeling of warmth, affection, life and latent strength that only women have.
“The woman who is a woman, the real woman is always queen, she is always there over the heels …”
Hilda Furacão — Character from Roberto Drummond inspired by a Minas Gerais personality.
The chosen palette was based on earthy tones and nuances of red, yellow, coral and pink too (why not?).
Flat reigning
We looked for a graphic orientation that would bring freshness, highlight the chosen colors and also did justice to the technology theme. For all this, nothing better than the flat aesthetic, which has been interligated to the life of digital designers for a long time.
“In my class at college, which had 60 people, only I graduated among women. It was a very big challenge. The class was predominantly men and the teachers themselves said that women in this area did not work. ”
Aline Bittencourt — professor of the Web Programming course for women at the Minas Gerais Education for Work Foundation (Utramig) and a doctoral student in Mathematical and Computational Modeling.
Regional fauna and flora
Last but not least, we wanted to bring the regionality of the cerrado: its colors, its fauna and flora, its flavors and aromas. We searched for this whole repertoire in colors and motifs that would remind us of where we are, being more evident in the graphic motifs we selected.
We searched for regional species from the brazilian savannah (cerrado) and came across the textures of tortuous deciduous trees, with thick bark and grooves like the mimoso rosewood (jacarandá mimoso), the shapes of fruits like the araticum and the lightness of the ipe (ipê) flowers, present in colors that go from yellow and white to pink and lilac. The fauna is also contemplated by the abstraction of the jaguar’s coat and the toucan’s eye spot. All of them are represented in our design.
“Several women have already contacted me, saying that I certainly give them a certain inspiration. So I think we need more initiatives that recognize and encourage women. ”
Rafaela Salgado Ferreira, researcher at the Laboratory of Computational Protein Biology, Institute of Biological Sciences at UFMG.
And here’s the result! A colorful visual identity, full of life and made with heart by the local community.
What are your thoughts? Leave it in the comments for us!!
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PS: Special thanks to Monica Barros, who built some of the arts for this post. You’re amazing! ❤
See ya!
