Outspoken

Oh hi!

I am thrilled to share with you the logo for Outspoken, a new video series for En Femme.

After a little over two years of Help Me, Hannah!, we are pivoting to a new project. Outspoken is going to focus on people in the LGBTQ+ community and the work that they do. I wouldn’t say it’s going to be more serious than our previous series, but… well, it is, lol.

Outspoken will touch on real issues that impact the queer community and introduce viewers to others who are allies and supporters and the work that they do.

The first episode will go live soon-ish and features an interview with Marcy Dare, the owner and founder of underDARE, underDARE is a physical shop in south Minneapolis that sells gender affirming undergarments, from binders to gaffs to tucking leggings. We filmed the episode over two days, including a segment about the photoshoot for her products.

I am thrilled to work with my friend Sophie on this project. Sophie does EVERYTHING for Outspoken besides being in front of the camera. The editing, the filming, the… uh, magic.

Outspoken would not exist without her. She turns hours of footage into an episode and helps me stay focused and encouraged while we shoot.

She helped shape the show’s identity and she also designed the logo. She puts a lot of thought and work into whatever she does, and the logo is a beautiful example of this.

When she shared what she was thinking about it, I was stunned by the idea and how it worked on not only the visual of it, but the symbolism of it as well.

I am excited to share her logo, as well as her thoughts and her approach to it.

I was surprised when Hannah suggested I take a crack at the logo for Outspoken. Anyone who has spent any time on her website knows that Hannah is an accomplished artist and designer, and she clearly enjoys title design and layout and all that stuff. But I wasn’t going to say no and immediately dove in. That said, I struggled for a while with this. When I’m approaching a logo design I try to check three boxes:

1. It needs to be legible. People need to be able to read it quickly and easily and not have to squint to figure out what it says. Ideally at multiple scales.
2. It needs to be relevant to the subject matter. I want it to feel like the style fits the product, and wouldn’t make sense with anything else.
3. It needs to be printable on products. Y’know, merch. T-shirts, coffee mugs, stickers, whatever. That means I want it to work with one color, if possible.

I started out by just trying a lot of different font treatments and layout options. Then I tried incorporating iconography related to speaking with things like cartoon talking bubbles, stylized head profiles, and shapes that looked like sound waves. I also tried thinking about our connection to the queer community and doing deeper with rainbows and trans flag colors. But none of it felt like it was giving me what I was looking for, or was getting away from my main three goals. Then one day I was going for a walk and listening to a podcast about Medusa. She was the snake-haired monster from Greek mythology who could turn a man to stone just by looking at them.

The podcast was talking about how Medusa was actually a tragic figure in mythology, not a monster. She used to be a beautiful priestess of Minerva. But then Neptune raped her in Minerva’s temple. Minerva punished Medusa for this indignity by turning her into a monster. Because the Patriarchy. Medusa then went to live in a cave at the edge of the world so she wouldn’t be bothered. And entitled men just kept showing up to gawk at her. I mean, that’s messed up, right? She wasn’t a violent monster rampaging across the countryside. The poor girl simply wanted to figure out how to live a life in the body she ended up with, not the body she wanted, and be left alone. But a-holes who said they knew better wouldn’t leave her alone and sometimes tried to kill her. If that’s not a trans allegory, I don’t know what is.

Medusa is an iconic figure. She is instantly recognizable. I started to think that she might be the perfect figurehead for Outspoken. The problem, after I dug deeper into it, was that Medusa’s legends are complicated and messy, as most Greek mythology is. The relevance gets weaker as you learn and read more. Most of all, she wasn’t outspoken. She tried to hide from civilization. And that’s not what this show is about.

But there are a lot of other Greek and Roman myths, and a lot of figures from those.

Tiresias was a man from Greek mythology who, after seeing two snakes copulating and hitting them with a stick, was transformed into a woman. This kind of thing happened from time to time back then, but most men who were transformed weren’t too keen on it. Tiresias was all about it, becoming a priestess of Hero, getting married, and having some kids. But then after seven years, he saw more snakes doing their business and saw his opportunity to return to being a man. It’s an interesting story, unique for the subject’s embracing their new gender. But it didn’t feel like what I was looking for.

Dionysus was the Greek god of wine making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theater. He was also sometimes called Bacchus, which is the name I was more familiar with. Dionysus was the closest thing to a transgender god that the Greeks had, though in modern terms we might say non-binary or gender fluid, depending on the story. He was also polyamorous and bisexual. I love this character personally, but Dionysus has a similar problem to Medusa where his stories are varied and messy, and aren’t really about speaking out, or telling the truth. So I tried a new focus.

Cassandra was a Trojan priestess of Apollo. Apollo had the hots for her and blessed her with the ability to see the future in order to seduce her. But when she refused to sleep with him, he got angry and cursed her so that no one would ever believe her prophecies. Can you imagine how frustrating that would be? To be able to see the future and tell people the truth, but for no one to ever believe you. My favorite painting of Cassandra shows her standing before the burning ruins of Troy, pulling her hair out with frustration because they said she was insane for even suggesting Troy could fall. I really like Cassandra, but with this show we want people to believe what we and our guests are saying. We want to encourage that, not start from a position where we’re saying, “No one believes us!”

Finally, I found the Roman goddess of truth, Veritas. She is a pretty straightforward character. She wears white. She lives at the bottom of a holy well. She is usually depicted holding a hand mirror. She speaks the truth, and honors those who do. Outspoken is about speaking truth, and about sharing honest experiences and perspectives. Also, the iconography is clean. The hand mirror and the roundness of the well repeats nicely with a title that contains two “O’s”. And a clean, white design can evoke the look of a Roman statue carved from white marble. With Veritas in my mind, I felt like I had an idea that could check all of my boxes.

And that’s how we ended up with our logo for Outspoken!

Thank you to Sophia and to En Femme. I can’t wait to share the first episode with you.

Love, Hannah