#WeThe15 sees Pentagram collaborate on a boldly minimalistic campaign for the world's largest marginalised community

15 per cent. That’s how much of the population have a disability. Many of these 1.2 billion people struggle daily to access basic rights to healthcare, education and employment. But the new global campaign #WeThe15 aims to address this by being the world’s biggest ever human rights movement, created in partnership with the International Paralympic Committee.

20 organisations including the UN, UNESCO and the International Disability Alliance have collaborated to support adam&eveDDB’s campaign with a supporting identity designed by Pentagram’s Harry Pearce.

The identity for the campaign includes a wordmark, a symbol, and sonic branding by Pentagram partner Yuri Suzuki. The sonic branding created by Suzuki and his team uses several techniques that allow the hearing impaired to also experience the identity, embodying the values of inclusivity within the campaign deliverance techniques themselves.

The purple #WeThe15 symbol – which uses the internationally recognised colour of disability – is a minimalistic visual representation of the percentage within a pie chart. “Some of the most powerful and usable symbols in the world are the most simple,” says Pearce, “and we hope this works on that level of simplicity.” In a more unusual use of a campaign identity, throughout the Paralympic Games athletes will also wear temporary tattoos of the #WeThe15 symbol. The campaign’s type design is intended to be “clear, powerful and confident. Nothing more than that.”

It was important, claims Pearce, that the symbol was usable enough for any and everyone; “It can be tattooed, it can be projected or created by hundreds of drones in the sky. What matters is that it is for everyone.” Pentagram’s team chose the typeface, Neue Haas Grotesk Display, and the weight for “its straightforwardness, its strength and its universality”.

90 iconic global landmarks will be illuminated in purple light including the Elysee Palace in Paris, the Niagara Falls, the Empire State Building, the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye.

To coincide with this global purple illumination, big screens across the UK like Piccadilly Lights will launch the campaign. A short film has also been created by adam&eveDDB which introduces the campaign. It will be broadcast for the first time at the Paralympics 2020 opening ceremony in Tokyo. Like race, gender and sexual orientation, #WeThe15 want to have a movement which all individuals with disabilities can feel reflected in and supported by.

The campaign will officially launch at the Paralympics opening ceremony on 24 August 2021.