By having a monochrome vagina for the logo design and striking black colored, white, and millennial red pictures of lollipops, gaping Georgia O’Keeffe-esque plants, and bondage masks, Pure seems like no other dating application on the marketplace. Its no-nonsense visuals are supposed to show the unique feature regarding the application, which broadcasts users just for an hour or so before it deletes their profile, thus encouraging fast get-togethers in place of long-lasting dating.

But could the branding of a hookup software such as this result in the search for no-strings-attached intercourse feel empowering?

Manages to do it fight the slut-shaming that includes historically trained females to trust they must be discreet about libido?

Throughout the very early times of online dating sites, general market trends advised that the majority of ladies felt it absolutely was unwanted to acknowledge being on internet dating sites after all, not to mention with solely intentions that are sexual. Therefore, hookup apps saw it like in their utmost passions to be anodyne when it found branding. To combat the Craigslist rhetoric of “meet hot babes who wish to bang,” most apps avoid showing any semblance of sexual intent, deciding on images more when you look at cam mature the world of “acceptable” network-building sites like LinkedIn. Bumble, the “female-friendly” Tinder where ladies begin chatting very first, looks a lot more like a “buzzing” coworking facilitator than an area for intimate dalliances and play that is erotic.

Also apps which can be more explicit about the intent of users, like threesome facilitator Feeld, have actually the air that is unmistakableand color) of Airbnb. Grindr, on the other hand, is obvious about its intent and encourages its users become therefore. A lesbian equivalent Scissr possesses clear title, but its branding seems like an earlier form of Instagram, detailed with typewriter icons and photos of 35mm digital digital digital cameras.

When I argued final thirty days in a write-up on how the intercourse industry markets to females, this evasive branding happens to be proactive in motivating a female-born customer to experiment when they’ve been taught from an early age become discreet about desire. But, evasive branding additionally perpetuates the issue by marketing the concept that intercourse shouldn’t be freely talked about. That’s why Pure’s method of its layouts is potentially quite radical.

Its logo design, its pictures, as well as its program are clear; its erotic art digest and newsletter that is weekly Intercourse Is Pure, additionally created by Shuka, is equally aesthetically striking.

“We created a design that could first look strange, after which at a 2nd appearance, seems friendly and usable,” say Shuka. “The primary concept would be to attract news attention—always a very important thing for a start-up—and to generate an identification that might be mentioned through person to person, just as that the hookup stories that happen through the software are.”

But the majority of components of the application are problematic, and deflate the potential that is radical of transparency. The strange content sells Pure as being a hookup app for “awesome people” (a sure-fire deterrent to virtually any actually “awesome” potential users), and its particular tagline guarantees it’s a “discreet” platform (even though the branding, and software icon, are overtly not too). Whilst the pictures are fresh and surely sexy, i really do wonder exactly why there are just characters that are female the mix. You will find boobs, the vagina logo design, drawings of gaping mouths smothered in lipstick… Why only one sorts of sexuality, with no other experiences, desires, or a feeling of fluidity?

Pure, design by Shuka

Shuka’s illustrations for Pure company cards plus the launch celebration paraphernalia, having said that, feel refreshingly bold and original. A few evocative brushstrokes delineate a number of numbers in a variety of interconnected jobs: most are androgynous, most are far more clearly defined. This juxtaposition of strong linework and looser, brushstroke illustration designs ended up being section of Shuka’s plan, the agency informs us. “It should really be tactile, and images needs to have edges that are differing. We believe that underscores sensuality.”

The primary focus of the design is to get attention (and it’s worked), not to promote women’s sexual freedom while the app encourages transparency.

The usage of a vagina being a logo design is certainly not to destigmatize, it is a“look that is purposeful me,” and also this could very well be probably the most dangerous facet of the branding. It’s important we promote destigmatization of feminine human anatomy components—like the efforts of #FreeTheNipple—but we ought to not confuse a design that’s destigmatizing by having a design that’s taking advantage of the simple fact one thing is stigmatized, and it is consequently utilizing it become “rebellious” for news attention.

The imagery Shuka has designed is fresh and attractive, and undoubtedly unlike every other software, but eventually its provocation is a marketing ploy that is hollow. This really is starkly revealed by the reality that its in-app pictures are just providing to at least one types of sex. The feeling of transparency is welcomed, however it should always be taken further by adopting a multiplicity of genders and sexualities.