Visual Verbal Design

So, the idea behind my entire project is rebranding Mia Khalifa by removing male gaze from her and her projects. For my visual design project I wanted to do a redo of her SportBall podcast promo and make it more fitting to the new, female centered design. The first thing on my mind was changing the name. I think that “SportsBall” was chosen for a podcast with Mia Khalifa because people don’t take her seriously as a woman commenting on sports. There’s something kind of tongue and cheek about the name. It’s almost like a joking “haha I’m a girl I don’t really get this sports thing? What’s that? What’s a SportsBall?” Despite the fact that she is extremely knowladgabe on sports it is almost played down likely to not intimidate men. Khalifa rose to fame during her time in porn so the viewers they’re appealing to are likely men who know her from that. They don’t want to scare men off by presenting Khalifa as this new serious and professional woman that she is, they want men to think she is still that sexy desirable woman that you don’t have to fear knowing more than you. They have to dumb her down to make her appealing. Immediately I wanted to change the name to something that didn’t do that. Game Time I think has a bit more weight to it in terms of being taken seriously. It sounds like something you’d hear on ESPN or any other serious sports network. It still holds the connotation of sports but by no means diminishes Khalifa. I also added “with Mia Khalifa and Tyler Coe” not just to let people know they’re involved but to establish authority. By having her name attached to a serious sports podcast title it establishes that she is a serious sports commentator. There is nothing in the podcast name that would play her down or make her feel jokey. Looking at the design itself I chose a photo of her that less sexualized than the first one. The first image she has a very stern look as well as heavy cleavage from a lacy black top. Frankly I think Khalfia looks out of place on the first poster as everything is kind of perky except for her. I think this was done to keep pushing that sexual appeal that they’re so dead set on. Tyler Coe gets to smile and look like you’d expect a commentator to look like, but Khalifa has to look sexy. Professional clothes aren’t appeal in the male gaze and a simple smile isn’t sexy it’s just cute. I decided to get a photo of her that wasn’t anything particularly sexualized. The outfit she was in originally had more cleavage but after a ton of consideration I decided to cover it up with a tank top looking effect. I don’t do this lightly as I really don’t want it to seem like I’m shaming her or her body as I personally have no problem with her showing some cleavage. However, the point of this project is to remove the male gaze and very very often we see that cleavage is used to appeal to males. I wanted to keep the color scheme as I think that the orange is immediately a sports vibe. I went ahead and just googled a basketball and just pulled the color from that which is fun and again runs home the sports idea. I also changed the background to a basketball court again to emphasize the idea that it is a sports podcast. The original background was weird. It was almost comedic, and I genuinely don’t understand what they were going for so I wanted the new one to be a lot more clear cut sport related. The font I changed a little bit. I went through a lot of fonts but settled on this one as it made me think that it was very sport like, I didn’t like the curve on the original lettering as I feel like it was once again playing into this softer, more light-hearted tone. I want to be very clear that this podcast is a serious sports podcast with that has authority so I went for straight lettering with a bolded font and orange stroke just to keep up the color scheme. I also made with Mia Khalifia and Tyler Coe in a smaller font just to make sure the emphasis is still on the Game Time but let it stay known that it is still with them.