The Goodie Bix was a done during a partnered illustration mentorship between The Graphic Designers of Canada (GDC) and Ribbon Rouge Foundation for their Arts 4 Action Benefit that brings awareness of HIV to Edmonton.
This Illustration is also part of a series of illustrations that centralize on the theme “Sexevolution” and where each illustration is done by a different student participating in the mentorship.
The theme “Sexevolution” itself means to evolve the perceptions of what sex usually means into a more neutral and positive understanding when you think about what sex means, the connotations associated with that action are quite negative, such as the act of sex being quite painful, sex being associated with rape, having it be too taboo to talk about it in a healthy and safe way, how sex education is even being completely dismissed in schools, and if you were having too much sex people always saw you in a negative light.
Instead, the goal of these illustrations was to flip those connotations around and make sex an open conversation.
There shouldn’t be anything taboo about sex, people should be able to speak about sex openly, it’s a normal thing to experience, and the number of people you sleep with, or who you choose to sleep with should not define you.
The Goodie Box is an illustration that depicts a box of assorted chocolate, however looking at it more closely each chocolate depicts an aspect of the theme, Sexevolution. The chocolates vary in appearance from sexual reproductive organs, condoms, birth control pills, HIV related symbols, and some of the chocolates reflected HIC positive individuals who were willing to meet with us an share their story throughout the membership.
The concept of a box of chocolates originated from the Pizza Theory, which was a response to the Baseball – Sex comparison. Though, instead of using pizza as the main imagery, I decided to go with chocolate since it had a more direct relation to sex. Therefore, a box of chocolate has a direct comparison to sex, in the contexts that you can share a box of chocolate with whoever you choose (you can have sex with whoever you want), you can decline have a piece of chocolate (you can decline having sex), you can have as much chocolate as you want (you can have as much sex as you want), you can compromise when to eat chocolate (you can compromise when to have sex), there are various ways to ahve chocoalte (there are different ways to have sex), there are pieces of hcocalte where the ousides and insde have different flavours (people will present themselves in a way tha differs who they are on the inside), and you can have chocolate no matter what the occasion is (having sex is a completely normal activity, you don’t need to have a specific occasion for it). The Goodie Box opens the conversation about sex direct and symbolic imagery, yet creates a more light and positive mood with bright colours and simple art style.
Until next time!