With a monochrome vagina for the logo and striking black colored, white, and millennial red pictures of lollipops, gaping Georgia O’Keeffe-esque plants, and bondage masks, Pure appears like hardly any other dating app on the marketplace. Its no-nonsense images are supposed to show the selling that is unique regarding the software, which broadcasts users just for an hour or so before it deletes their profile, thus encouraging fast get-togethers in place of long-lasting dating.
But could the branding of a hookup software such as this result in the search for no-strings-attached intercourse feel empowering?
Did it fight the slut-shaming which have historically trained females to trust they must be discreet about sexual interest?
Throughout the very very early times of internet dating, researching the market recommended that the majority of ladies felt it absolutely was unwelcome to acknowledge being on internet dating sites at all, aside from with solely intimate motives. Therefore, hookup apps saw it such as their finest passions to be anodyne when it stumbled on branding. To fight the Craigslist rhetoric of “meet hot babes who would like to bang,” most apps avoid showing any semblance of intimate intent, deciding on pictures more when you look at the world of “acceptable” network-building sites like LinkedIn. Bumble, the “female-friendly” Tinder where ladies begin chatting very very very first, looks similar to a “buzzing” coworking facilitator than a place for intimate dalliances and erotic play.
Also apps which are more explicit about the intent of users, like threesome facilitator Feeld, have actually the air that is unmistakableand color) of Airbnb. Grindr, having said that, is obvious about its intent and encourages its users become therefore. A lesbian equivalent Scissr possesses name that is transparent but its branding appears like an early on type of Instagram, that includes typewriter icons and photos of 35mm digital digital cameras.
When I argued final thirty days in a write-up about how precisely the intercourse industry markets to ladies, this evasive branding happens to be proactive in motivating a female-born customer to experiment when they’ve having sex with a big girl been taught from an early age become discreet about desire. Nonetheless, evasive branding additionally perpetuates the issue by advertising the theory that intercourse should not be freely talked about. That’s why Pure’s method of its images is possibly quite radical.
Its logo design, its pictures, and its particular screen are clear; its erotic art digest and newsletter that is weekly Intercourse Is Pure, additionally created by Shuka, is similarly aesthetically striking.
“We created a design that will first look strange, after which at a look that is second seems friendly and usable,” say Shuka. “The primary concept would be to attract news attention—always a very important thing for the start-up—and to generate an identification that could be mentioned through person to person, just as that the hookup stories that occur through the application are.”
However, many components of the software are problematic, and deflate the radical potential of its transparency. The copy that is bizarre Pure as a hookup application for “awesome individuals” (a sure-fire deterrent to virtually any actually “awesome” potential users), and its own tagline guarantees so it’s a “discreet” platform (even though the branding, and application icon, are overtly not). Whilst the pictures are fresh and surely sexy, i really do wonder exactly why there are just characters that are female the mix. You can find boobs, the vagina logo, drawings of gaping mouths smothered in lipstick… Why only one sorts of sex, with no other experiences, desires, or a feeling of fluidity?
Pure, design by Shuka
Shuka’s illustrations for Pure company cards and also the launch celebration paraphernalia, having said that, feel refreshingly bold and initial. A number of evocative brushstrokes delineate lots of numbers in several positions that are interconnected most are androgynous, most are more clearly defined. This juxtaposition of strong linework and looser, brushstroke illustration designs ended up being section of Shuka’s plan, the agency informs us. “It is tactile, and visuals needs to have differing edges. We genuinely believe that underscores sensuality.”
Although the application encourages transparency, the principal focus of this design is to obtain attention (plus it’s worked), to not market women’s intimate freedom.
The usage a vagina as being a logo design just isn’t to destigmatize, it is a purposeful “look at me,” and also this is probably the essential dangerous facet of the branding. It’s important we promote destigmatization of feminine human anatomy components—like the efforts of #FreeTheNipple—but we ought to maybe not confuse a design that is destigmatizing by having a design that’s taking advantage of the simple fact one thing is stigmatized, and it is therefore utilizing it become “rebellious” for news attention.
The imagery Shuka has created is fresh and attractive, and definitely unlike just about any application, but finally its provocation is just a marketing ploy that is hollow. This will be starkly revealed by the fact its illustrations that are in-app just providing to 1 form of sex. The feeling of transparency is welcomed, however it ought to be taken further by adopting a multiplicity of genders and sexualities.