YEAR:
2025
CLIENT:
Personal
SERVICES:
Social Advocacy Design
EXPERIENCE:
Visual Storyteller & Designer // Production Designer // Brand Strategist
The Biased Supermarket
background.
For my Master’s final major project, I set out to investigate the subtle but powerful mechanisms that normalize and uphold systemic oppression, particularly through language bias and emotional invalidation. My chosen format was an experimental publication, but with an unconventional twist: the project would arrive not as a book on a shelf, but inside a supermarket-style package.
The concept evolved into “The Biased Supermarket,” a satirical and tactile metaphor that combines everyday shopping with the consumption of biased narratives. At first glance, the box mimics familiar packaging design, but inside, hidden beneath shredded newspaper “filler,” lie three mini-books, each designed as a parody of food products. The aim is to provoke curiosity, invite physical digging, and reveal the unsettling ways media and political discourse “package” reality.
In recognition of its experimental approach and critical exploration of design as social commentary, the project was awarded the Vaughan Oliver Award 2025 for Experimentation.
core problem.
While bias in media and politics is often discussed abstractly, it remains difficult for many to recognize its everyday forms. I identified three interlinked challenges that guided the project:
Invisible Normalization
Euphemisms, clichés, and rhetorical tricks in headlines or speeches often slip under the radar, reinforcing harmful hierarchies while appearing “neutral.”Lack of Media Literacy Tools
Many people consume biased language daily but lack accessible, engaging frameworks to unpack how it works.Emotional Distance
Discussions of systemic bias are often framed as too academic, detached, or intimidating, making it difficult to connect emotionally and personally.
my process.
I began by researching how everyday packaging, advertising, and food labelling simplify complex realities into consumable messages. This became a metaphorical lens for how media packages truth in equally digestible but distorted ways.
I then translated each category of bias into a food-based editorial object:
Book 1: Eggscape Accountability
Using egg imagery to critique euphemism and passive framing in political speech.Book 2: Minced Humanity
Styled as a pack of minced meat, addressing classist and dehumanising language.Book 3: Baked Guilt
Presented as bread packaging, unpacking how gendered clichés and “it’s just a joke” rhetoric dismiss lived experiences.
To heighten tactility and interactivity, I used shredded newspapers inside the box, symbolising the constant noise of media discourse. The physical act of digging through this filler to retrieve the books mimics uncovering hidden bias beneath the noise.
key actions.
→ Supermarket-Style Packaging
Created a satirical outer box styled like a grocery product, flipping the comforting visual language of consumerism into a critique of bias-as-commodity.
→ Three Mini-Books as Food Parodies
Each book mirrored a food product design (egg carton, minced meat tray, bread bag), embedding editorial critique within an instantly familiar format.
→ Shredded Newspaper Fill
Introduced as both a metaphor (media saturation and noise) and a physical barrier, prompting active engagement to uncover content.
→ Material Experimentation
Used low-cost yet tactile materials to heighten sensory experience and emphasise disposability versus permanence.
→ Satirical Copywriting & Visual Tone
Adopted the voice of supermarket advertising, playful, punchy, persuasive; while twisting it toward critical reflection on systemic oppression.
outcomes.
Playful but Provocative Engagement
The supermarket metaphor disarmed audiences by drawing them into a familiar visual world, then unsettled them with unexpected depth and critique.Tactile Media Literacy Tool
By turning the discovery process into a physical act, the project transformed abstract media theory into an accessible, participatory experience.Distinct Identity per Book, Cohesive System Overall
Each mini-book stood on its own while contributing to the overarching supermarket brand. Together, they formed a critical “product line” on how language manipulates meaning.
