ADC Awards
The ADC Annual Awards is the oldest continuously running industry award show in the world. Now in its incredible 102nd year, these awards celebrate the very best in advertising, digital media, graphic and publication design, packaging and product design, motion, experiential and spatial design, photography, illustration and fashion design all with a focus on artistry and craftsmanship.
Category
Design for Good / Brand / Communication Design - Single
Annual ID
ADC102_BCD005G
About the Work
WAYFINDING THROUGH BIAS
“Maps are not ideologically neutral location guides. Mapmakers choose what to include and exclude, and how to display information to users. These decisions can have far-reaching consequences.”* When marginalized communities navigate the world, they are asked to do so using tools that prioritize someone else’s worldview. With its map, Black & Abroad has created a way to see and navigate the U.S. in a way that centers both Black users and the country’s Blackness. In this way, The Black Elevation Map is transparent and purposeful about its bias.
THE BLACK ELEVATION MAP
An uplifting domestic travel utility for Black & Abroad that visualizes Black cultural data as elevation. The greater the density of data, the higher the elevation.
DATA VISUALIZATION
At the center, a visualization of +330,000,000 points of data, which through exploration reveals insights about population distribution, and where Black-owned businesses and cultural institutions are likely to be present, absent, and in what abundance.
PRIORITIZING SELF-IDENTIFICATION
The data gathering process considered scale, quality, accessibility across all 50 states, ethical sourcing and race-based bias. We prioritized data from sources where users self-report their own ethnicity.
A HISTORY OF DESIGN
This project sits on a continuum of Black-led design and “counter-mapping” – a map-making practice interested in establishing and charting Black geographies at times when barriers to owning your space (disappropriation) could be as elusive as barriers to owning your body (slavery, lynching and incarceration).
ICONIC ICONS & TYPE
The headline font used throughout this project is “Martin”, created by American designer Tré Seals based on Civil Rights protest posters. The body copy is another Seals typeface: “Du Bois”, inspired by that legendary graphic designer’s work. Seals also created the project’s original “points of interest” icon set, based on his survey of West African symbology.
*Alderman & Inwood.
2023 Awards
Total Points: 45
Gold Cube
Credits
Agency
Performance Art / Toronto
Design Firm
Vocal Type Co. / Washington D.C.
Digital Agency
Reprise Canada / Toronto
PR / Marketing Agency
Glossy Inc. / Toronto
Client
Eric Martin
Kent Johnson
Client / Brand
Black & Abroad / Atlanta
Production Company
Alfredo Films / Toronto
Music / Sound Production Company
TA2 Sound + Music / Toronto
Post Production Company
Alter Ego / Toronto
Chief Creative Officer
Ian Mackenzie
Designer
Emily Plewes
Director
Kelly Fyffe-Marshall
Director of Photography
Shivam Pandya
Editor
Michael Ofori-Attah
Executive Creative Director
Colin Craig
Account Supervisor
Ricky Gunawan
Associate Creative Director
Benson Ngo
Pedro Izzo
Chief Executive Officer
Andrea Cook
Program Manager
Kaylen Dillon
account director
Jon Rae
Agency Partner
Meta / New York
Analytics Analyst
Abdul Dau
Analytics Manager
Anil Iqbal
Audience
Kinesso / New York
Chief Operations Officer
Elizabeth Sellors
Consultant
Gigi Basanta
Digital Producer
Darwin Garcia
Experience Delivery Lead
Nzegwhua Anderson
Experience Designer
Leon Mullings
Full Stack Developer
Cody Schreiber
Group Director, Product Development
Arnaud Icard
Interface Developer
Heung Lee
Junior Analyst
Shaista Meghji
Lead Developer
John Iacoviello
Media agency
Initiative Canada / Toronto
Quality Assurance Analyst
Nataliya Vislyanska
Quality Assurance Lead
Natalia Zadorozhna
Senior Experience Designer
Joe Szabo
Senior Technical Architect
Valerian Nasqidashvili
Solutions Consultant
Kaivalya Kashyap
SVP, Head of Strategy
Priyanka Goswami
SVP, Managing Director
Jordan Dinning
Technical Solutions Consultant
Suraj Patel
VP, Strategy
Kirk Linkletter
VP, Technology
Stuart Cheesmond
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