roisjordan

Intelligent Intimacy

As a result of growing up with minimal sex education in Catholic Ireland, for my final year project, I created the free resource Intelligent Intimacy- where getting it on is more than just getting it in. Young people deserve thorough, respectful, church-free and shame-free sex education. Intelligent Intimacy educates, advocates and takes young people seriously, teaching young people how to navigate online porn, consent and also how to speak up about sex. Intelligent Intimacy isn’t about changing young people, it’s about changing old attitudes to reflect the real experiences young people face, instead of continuing to sweep it under the carpet.

2021

Art Direction, Photography, UX Design, Digital

The visual language for Intelligent Intimacy is heavily inspired by the ITC fonts and art direction of Herb Lubalin and editorial style of Ralph Ginsburg, who published a quarterly magazine containing articles and photo essays on love and sex in the early 1960s. Eros, as it was called, self-descriptively ‘broke taboos, rattled some nerves and made a few enemies’, ultimately leading Ginsburg to be sentenced to five years in prison.

Logo experiments

Photography experiments

The bold, cheeky, and visual language takes inspiration from the ground-breaking attitudes of Eros and channels a humorous and engaging tone of voice to translate the potentially difficult subject matter into the public sphere.

Photography moodboard

Poster campaign

Eros magazine inspiration

Intelligent intimacy creates awareness around the importance of building the foundations for young people to openly communicate about relationships and intimacy. It also provides the resources, material, and support to facilitate this. Fact-based inclusive sex education in schools that addresses this is one tangible way that we have the power to build a better society in Ireland, so let’s start there.

Initial copywriting ideas

Intelligent Intimacy 2021 Manifesto

Sticker Campaign

Microsite

The core design problem was communicating both the human-ness, empathetic and essential aspect of this subject matter. Making it feel maneagable and not intimidating, capturing the empathy that is at the centre of this project .

My point of view was that a sex and intimacy education should not come from a religious point of view. That the shame, sexism and discrimination perpetuated in conservative sex education programmes is damaging to society. Opening this education up and having frameworks in place to create an awareness around a more holistic and accepting appoach to sex education will lead to a more accepting and safe society for our young people.

Social media campaign

The main objective was to have young people be aware that there is more to sex education than just biology. I aimed to inform young people on the topics that are left out of conventional Irish sex education. I aimed also to reduce the taboo around talking about sex and the issues around it, in the hope that young people can have safer, more comfortable experiences exploring intimacy for the first time, free of shame.