Sogi’s Story

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  • 2015

  • Communication
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The Australian Human Rights Centre asked us to create an educational resource for African national human rights institutions, civil society organisations and local community groups to encourage learning and awareness of sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex status (SOGI).The comic book was to be handed out in UNCHR centres across 16 Commonwealth African nations including Uganda, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Swaziland and Tanzania, to provide inspiration for Africans struggling with SOGI issues in countries where they are not only stigmatised but actively discriminated against and often are at risk of physical harm.


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  • CHALLENGE
  • SOLUTION
  • IMPACT
  • MORE
  • A big challenge for us was finding the right story to tell - the issue was huge, the problem complex and different across the 16 nations the comic was going to. There were also issues of language, literacy and the biggest problems was that we could only offer empathy to readers, not hope, as the solution was far from close. We took the approach that “everyone loves a swiss army knife because it does everything, but they are ugly. We needed to create a simple story that does one thing - we need to write a love story.”

  • We had to educate on two levels - the first was to those persecuted to let that them know they weren't alone and introduce avenues of support. The challenge here was educating an audience without online access. We created an intentionally small comic book - 12 pages long, A5 format - so a reader could easily conceal it without incriminating themselves. We also made a B/W downloadable PDF so it could be easily distributed on a grass roots level. The second was an accompanying video, which which told the background of why this controversial issue and was aimed at those running the Centers. The resource was launched at DFAT and has been distributed through African Human Rights networks.

  • Following the theme of the love story we designed this in the style of an indie comic - closely framed scenes focused on the characters. We looked at the Ndbele house painting style of South Africa - their geometric 2D style, initially created as a secret wall code inspired our panel and layout design. Another challenge was how to represent “Anytown, Africa”. Africa is huge and diverse an representations are plagued by ignorance and stereotype - our rule of thumb was “if it feels like the Lion King, it's out” using instead a muted colour palette steering away from bright block patterns and typical African design motifs. Minimal animation was used in the video to not distract from the severity of the message.

  • A big challenge was finding the right story to tell - the issue was huge, the problem complex and different across the 16 nations the comic was going to. There were also issues of language, literacy and one of the biggest problems was that we could give offer empathy to readers, but not hope, as really the solution was far from close. We wrote the story around the philosophy that “What we need to do is to create a simple story that does one thing - we need to write a love story.” This was an issue that was misunderstood and plagued by bias and ignorance - we needed to break it down to its simplest elements because this was first and foremost a story about two humans in love and the trials they had to endure.

    The project was launched at DFAT by Prof. Gillian Triggs, President of the AHRC; Tim Wilson; the South African High Commissioner and Sen. Dean Smith, Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. The resource has been sent to HRC's in 16 African Commonwealth nations, most of which have criminalised homosexuality. It's being held up as a blueprint for approaching complex social issues both on grass roots and bureaucratic levels. That it's not a story with a happy ending was recognised and praised. Senator Smith said it was fitting that it didn't end in a traditional, tidy fashion “because the next chapter in SOGI's Story is yet to be written. And in a very real sense, we will be its authors.”