70% of young female creatives have never had the opportunity to work with a female creative director. The brand name is a combination of two words: ‘forte’ meaning ‘strength’ and ‘elle’ meaning ‘she’- a nice way of showing what the brand does and who they are aimed at.
The first touchpoint of the brand is a pocket sized handbook, created to fulfil the ‘acknowledge’ and ‘reassure’ brand values.
It felt really important for this project to champion female designers, in subtle and more obvious ways. One of the ways this is achieved is through the choice of typefaces used throughout. The main typeface, Montecatini, was designed by Louise Fili and the secondary typeface by Erin McLaughlin. These choices ensure female designers are kept at the heart of the brand.
The book is full of information, knowledge, guidance, insights, statistics and reassurance, with the aim of providing young female designers with the skills they need for the career ahead of them.
The ‘reassure’ section is all about imposter syndrome and confidence levels and is full of advice from existing female designers as well as tips about overcoming imposter syndrome and how to feel more creative confidence.
To go alongside the handbook, Fortelle produce an annual A3 piece, that is intended to be used as inspiration by female designers. There are different versions for different industries, the one pictured here is for Graphic Design.
Each individual page features a different female designer and their work. Careful consideration went into the selection of female designers as there is a combination of well known designers, such as Jessica Walsh and Jessica Hische, whilst there are also lesser known designers, like Vanessa Low and NNeka Njoku. This provides female designers with aspirational designers, as well as ones they can directly relate to.
This piece is held together with a gold metal ring in the left hand corner of the page to allow users to detach the pages and display them in their office or studio.
The brand also run an advertising campaign, raising awareness of the professional hurdles faced by female designers in the creative economy. This features posters and billboards placed in high traffic areas.
