I was commissioned by Weber Shandwick for a Tinder campaign created for Deaf Awareness Week, aimed at helping deaf people find love. The project featured twins Hermon and Heroda (Being_Her) translating dating phrases such as “I like your smile” into British Sign Language (BSL) gestures. The campaign was later featured in Cosmopolitan, among others.
BSL is the fourth most-used language in the UK. It’s not just hand movements, but facial expression, posture and use of the body. It has its own grammar and sentence structure, as well as regional dialects - and globally, there are 126 different sign languages. Interestingly, British and American Sign Language are largely mutually unintelligible.
Although the phrases were deliberately simple, decisions around nuance, emphasis and accuracy came up constantly on the day. For several gestures, the twins discussed which version best conveyed the meaning, and we reshot several sequences to land on a version everyone was happy with. What looks playful and immediate on screen was the result of careful collaboration.
There was also a photographic problem to solve. For each phrase, we had to decide which part of the gesture carried the meaning: the start, the end, or a combination of both. Not knowing BSL meant I couldn’t offer input. Instead, the shoot relied on communication, teamwork, and attention. And, sure enough, I had creeping doubts later that the sequences were in the correct order… a reminder that accuracy mattered just as much as energy.
The brief leaned into colour, simplicity and approachability. The images needed to feel fun and modern, but also respectful - playful without trivialising the language or the people using it. The result sits somewhere between PR photography and illustration: bold, graphic images with a real purpose behind them.
It was a lively, unusual shoot, but made easy by Hermon and Heroda. Beneath the humour and brightness, it was ultimately about the same thing as much of my work: making sure what’s communicated is not just eye-catching, but simple and understood.