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Practice Personal Pronouns

A six-poster series about personal pronouns, funded by a research grant at Utah State University.

Six tall, brightly colored posters hung side by side on a gallery wall, each headed “Practice Personal Pronouns,” with arches, staircases, phone screens, speech bubbles and numbered sections.

Some design projects sell a product. This one was about helping people have a better conversation.

Thanks to an Undergraduate Research and Creative Opportunity (URCO) grant from the Office of Research at Utah State University, I designed a series of six posters about personal pronouns. The goal was to help people understand pronouns and learn how to talk about them respectfully with gender-queer people.

The series

Each poster takes one question and answers it in plain language:

  • What are personal pronouns? The introduction, with a map of the five posters that follow.
  • Why do pronouns matter?
  • How do you determine someone else’s pronouns?
  • How to handle mistakes, because everyone makes them.
  • How can I take initiative?
  • How to help normalize pronouns.

They’re numbered so they read in order on a wall, but each one also works on its own. QR codes on the posters link to short videos for anyone who wants to learn more.

The intro poster: a yellow arch and staircase, cursors and sparkles, and a panel titled “What are personal pronouns?” with a numbered list of the series.
Poster 1, “Why do pronouns matter?”: a pink and yellow layout with a computer window, smiley faces and the words “They, theirs, them” curving across the bottom.
Poster 2, “How do you determine someone else’s pronouns?”: a blue poster with rainbow stripes, speech bubbles introducing names and pronouns, and a signpost.
Poster 3, “How to handle mistakes”: a pink poster with an arch, a checkerboard floor and green staircases, plus three columns of advice.
Poster 4, “How can I take initiative?”: a bright green grid with hands holding phones showing text messages.
Poster 5, “How to help normalize pronouns”: a red poster with block shapes and a row of name tags at the bottom reading “My name is… and my pronouns are…”

The approach

Pronouns can be a tense subject, and a poster full of rules would have made people feel lectured. So I went the other way: loud color, impossible staircases, arches, cursors and smiley faces. The posters look like a game, which makes them easier to walk up to.

Underneath the play, the structure stays strict. Every poster has the same header and footer, one big question and short blocks of text, so the series reads as a set from across the room.

The last poster ends with a row of name tags: “My name is… and my pronouns are…” It sums up the series in one line and gives people something to actually practice.