jessica oddi

In all my years, finding AUTHENTIC disabled representation in stock photography was next to impossible. It consisted of elderly people in hospital-grade manual chairs. Some SUPER kind (sarcasm) non-disabled person aiding someone, again in a hospital chair (wow ableds love those). But things are taking a turn. And not surprisingly, the change is led by disabled people. Shout out to Jennifer White-Johnson who recommended Affect the Verb and their #DisabledAndHere collecti...on. https://affecttheverb.com/collection/ They're disability-led, and offer free stock images celebrating disabled Black, Indigenous, people of colour. They even include image descriptions. And it's free? (With attribution.) WTF! Seriously go donate if you can. I don't believe something this beautiful should go without support! When the Disability & Philanthropy Forum needed social media posts, I knew these were a perfect fit. We then added the Forum's branding through shapes. As a designer, finding more and more assets with true representation is just overwhelming. Do you know of more projects like these? Drop it in the comments! [ID 1: Four disabled people of colour gather around table during a meeting. A Black woman sitting on a couch gestures and speaks while the three others (a South Asian person sitting in a wheelchair, a Black non-binary person sitting in a chair, and a Black non-binary person standing with a clipboard and cane) face her and listen. Overlapped with navy, white, and green rectangles in the upper left and lower right corners. ID 2: An Indigenous Two-Spirit person calls the elevator up by tapping the floor button with their prosthetic leg. Overlapped with the white Disability and Philanthropy Forum icon logo in the top right corner. ID 3: Close-up of a Black woman putting a hearing aid into her left ear. She is dressed in all black, with her pulled back by a scarf, and looking into a tabletop mirror. Overlapped with a green rectangle and blue triangle in the upper right and lower left corners.]

I LOVE to see client's kicking butt with their social after a rebrand. Seriously check out the feed of Almaz Ohene who is nailing the new guides! The thing is, not every grid template or trend works for your feed. Some heavily rely on photos, while others have much more graphics involved in their posts. The key is to figure out what sort of content you post, and go from there. And I come up with rules to go with the suggested grid.... For Almaz Ohene, posts worked in threes. Whether it be article features, blog posts, podcasts or workshops. We showcased that using the same background colour from the brand for each strip. I provided templates in Illustrator with solid drop shadow containers. And the result is a pretty sweet grid layout! Think outside the standard feed box. [ID: A four row social post grid layout. First row. Three posts with beige backgrounds for workshop booklets and testimonials. Second row. Three posts with purple backgrounds for podcast audio clips. Third row. Three text based posts with a dark grey background for snippets from blog posts. Fourth row. Three posts with a burnt orange background with screenshots from articles.]

Image Descriptions Rant: Hi, Jess here. I'm going to go on a bit of a rant about image descriptions today. Just strictly that. What they are, are small segments that should go in your caption that quite literally describe the image you are posting. So you are writing down what you see in a photo or a GIF or whatever. Now, the number one thing I get from people, non-disabled and disabled alike are: "I'm not really comfortable doing them", or "I don't know how. I'm not good at ...Continue reading

It's the little things that make me absolutely geek out about design! Take this palette for AlmazOhene we came up with for their new brand direction. NOT only is it functionable (the little swatches represent accessible pairings to the large swatches). BUT the palette itself is designed on brand. And I know, you're probably thinking: Yah Jess whatever isn't this like your job to design everything on brand?... YES hypothetical question I wrote for my own Instagram caption. That's the whole point! Something as simple as adding a thicker solid drop shadow to a solid black border can make or break a WHOLE vibe. And Almaz Ohene's updated aesthetic is: Websites from the 2000s but make it actually look good. Anyway, whatever I'm super excited over solid drop shadows okay? No more faded blurry things here, we're doing solid now. Ugh I LOVE my job. I'll be sharing more from this website project! But if you're feeling antsy go check it out live: almazohene.com [ID: Six square colour swatches with hex codes, outlined in a black border and solid drop shadow. Each swatch has smaller swatches on top to show accessible pairings. 1. FFFFFF pairs with burnt orange, grey and black. 2. FDF6F2 pairs with burnt orange, grey and black. 3. CDC5D9 pairs with grey and black. 4. B95037 pairs with white and beige. 3A424B pairs with white, beige and purple. 6. 000000 pairs with white, beige, and purple.]