Overview

Femicide 2021 (originally titled Femicidis) is an immersive visual poetry project that blends creative typography, digital art, and social activism. Developed within the "Art aplicat i disseny" course of the Bachelor's Degree in Digital Design and Creative Technologies at the Universitat de Lleida, the project was conceived ahead of November 25th—the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.The piece serves as a solemn tribute and a stark digital monument to the 78 women who lost their lives to gender-based violence in Spain during 2021. By turning raw data into moving, symbolic shapes, the project seeks to generate deep public reflection on a tragedy that persists in modern society.

The Challenge

The academic brief required the creation of a visual poetry piece where creative typography was the absolute protagonist, utilizing digital mediums to explore message, format, and expression.The emotional and conceptual challenge lay in translating sensitive, tragic statistics into an artistic narrative without dehumanizing the victims. Rather than presenting gender-based violence as mere cold numbers (such as the 78 victims in 2021, 100 in 2022, or 54 in 2023 so far), the goal was to give individual presence to each victim. The design needed to balance the conceptual duality of absence and presence, making the invisible magnitude of this systematic violence visible, silent, and deeply moving.

Our Approach

The creative process focused on a meticulous, research-driven creative process centered around typographic movement and symbolism:
     - Information & Data Sourcing: Verified records were gathered from the specialized database Feminicidio.net, extracting the names, and dates of the 78 victims of 2021 to ensure historical truth and respect.

     - Typographic Visual Narrative: The video was designed as an animation where each victim's name slowly emerges from left to right across a pitch-black background. Over time, the paths of these individual names diverge and self-organize to create the feminist symbol.

     - Symbolic Composition: As the animation progresses, the collective movement of the names gradually outlines and defines the feminist symbol. Deep purple—the universal color of feminist resistance—was selected to tint every letter, contrasting against the dark void to reinforce the themes of memory, space, and loss.

     - Experiential Silence: The design leveraged empty space and slow transitions to represent the stolen futures of these women, forcing viewers to sit with the weight of each name as it takes up its permanent symbolic space on screen.

Project Gallery

Results

The finished visual poetry video succeeded in transforming digital data into a powerful tool for memory and social awareness:
     - Exhibition & Recognition: The artwork was selected to be part of the exhibition "Futur Transmedia i Art Digital", organized by Lo Pardal - Fundació Guillem Viladot in collaboration with the Escola Politècnica Superior of the Universitat de Lleida.

     - Public Impact: The exhibition was open to the public from July 22 to September 30, 2023, exposing hundreds of visitors to the piece and successfully fostering dialogue and reflection around gender-based violence through digital art.

     - Creative Success: The project demonstrated the power of creative typography as a medium for active social memory, successfully giving voice, space, and a respectful digital tribute to victims whose stories must never be forgotten.