2020/2021 Winners & Shortlists

Cultural / Context information for the jury

October 11, 2020 marked the 25th anniversary of the International Day of the Girl (recognized in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action). Despite progress achieved in the last several years, discrimination, violence and unfair opportunities continued to undermine adolescent girls. 2020 was also the year that shook the world with COVID-19. People were forced to step back, pause and look at the world’s problems anew. This opened up an opportunity to also demand girls’ rights with a new outlook. UNICEF proposed to use this disruptive change for girls everywhere and show how they too can disrupt the norm and change the world (for the good). To do this, they tasked us to create a thought-provoking print-ad supporting girls’ rights and recognizing girls as powerful changemakers. The ad was featured in Vogue magazine editions around November 2020 in India, France, Italy, Japan, Germany, Australia and Greece.

Tell the jury about the illustration.

As a renowned fashion and style trendsetter, Vogue caters to a culturally and aesthetically mature audience. That’s why, we wished to develop an ad that resonated with their evolved sensibility and felt visually at home in such an editorial space. Instead of the conventional ‘shock factor’, we chose to create a positive, empowering visual that showcased girls as changemakers. Under the communication, “My Voice. Our Equal Future.” we developed a powerful, artistic illustration to make the audience sit up and take notice. We embedded smaller, hidden illustrations in the visual to further bring out the issues each girl would face. Thus, creating multiple inclusive, unifying and empowering narratives in one. The resultant mosaic created a jigsaw effect where each girl’s story complemented the stories of girls around her. Because empowering even one girl can be positively contagious to girls worldwide!