BARNVAGNSMARCHEN, 2022
Client: RFSU (The Swedish Association for Sexuality Education)・Concept and design: Sepidar Hosseini・Project leading: AFFAIRS・Producer: Elodie Details・Photo documentation: RFSU

Every day, more than 800 women around the world die from complications related to pregnancy, unsafe abortion, or childbirth. This is preventable — all it takes is political will and resources. The Pram March is RFSU’s annual campaign to raise awareness and mobilize action for global sexual and reproductive health and rights. Since 2010, it has brought together tens of thousands across Sweden in the fight to end maternal mortality. Each year, participants receive specially designed rain covers, scarves, bags, and flags, all created by a guest artist — transforming the streets into a vibrant, moving artwork that amplifies the march’s message.

The 2022 motif, created by Sepidar Hosseini, featured a striking typographic pattern in bold signal colors. It was built from the letterforms of the Barmer Katab typeface, which originally was collaboratively developed by 13 craftswomen from the Thar Desert in Rajasthan, India, as part of the community building project The Typecraft Initiative. The foliage-rich botanical typeface is described as ‘an oasis in the desert,’ and draws on local appliqué and patchwork traditions from the Thar Desert by integrating techniques such as reverse appliqué and patchwork to create typographic forms with a handcrafted and organic aesthetic.

The pattern highlights the number of deaths worldwide each day due to pregnancy, abortion, and childbirth, and also emphasizes the importance of collective, international coordination to bring about future change.