On August 25th, the corporate group messaging site 'Slack' unveiled a new way for developers to connect to their service: the 'Add to Slack' button. It was the culmination of a great deal of work, but it was a seemingly small detail that proved to be particularly important - the skin colour of the hand in the launch graphics. It was brown.
It may seem a minor element, but the fact is people of colour rarely see something like that. That's clear from the fact that people who saw the image immediately noticed how unusual it was. Which shows we're in a world where digital media has the bad habit of using white people as the default, and everyone else as different from the norm.
"You see graphics over and over excluding your skin color, it matters."
As one Twitter user said "It may seem like a small thing but when you see graphics over and over excluding your skin color, it matters." Another stated, " It may not mean much to y’all but it signifies:
1. POC work at Slack.. making visual decisions that are seen by millions (impact)
2. Visuals matter…. specifically around product users and what a “technologist” looks like. Seeing a brown hand is HUGE — icons matter.
3. Slack is serious about elevating POC in my opinion not just through press releases but through business decisions.. This content is going to be on a lot of blogs, posts and shared to a global audience..having imagery that highlights an anomaly. In a world that highlights 'white is right' and 'optimal' it brings me great joy to see some melanin on the page.
:) You da best Slack team."
"It avoids a caricature of a whole people."
Diogenes Brito, the designer who took the decision to use the hand graphic, explained that designers shouldn't be afraid to mix things up by using images depicting non-white people. When that happens, it avoids a caricature of a whole people, and makes a small but important difference. This is how he describes his thought process:
Diógenes, Brown Person: This hand should totally be brown. I’m brown.
Diogenes, Person: I’m trying to get good design work done and get this project out, not become an activist and start a movement or something.
Diógenes, Brown Person: It’s not a big deal, you’re the designer, you get to make it brown.
Diogenes, Person: Yea but, I’m going to ask Matt to do it, that’s like, making a thing of it. Diógenes, Brown Person: So what? You should make a thing of it, you never see this sort of thing.
Diogenes, Person: True. Dang. Now I feel bad about thinking so much about whether this is okay. This is okay right? I mean, no one’s gonna say anything. What could they say? Saying something about it would be racist.
Diógenes, Brown Person: Dude, even if he was the designer on this project he should make it brown. It’s like, affirmative design action.
Diogenes, Person: Yea!
Diógenes, Brown Person: Yea!
Diogenes, Person: Good talk, bro.
Essentially, the choices creators make really do matter. It will be interesting to see what kind of an effect this moment has started for upcoming projects within the community. Feel free to share more examples with us below or by email.
