Facial expressions as an exotic foreign language
In a new campaign for Autism Forum Switzerland, Ruf Lanz highlights that people with autism find it difficult to correctly interpret other people’s facial expressions, gestures, and emotions.
Autism is only really known to a few people in Switzerland. Accordingly, little understanding is often shown to those affected and their environment. That is why Autismus Forum Schweiz commissioned the creative agency Ruf Lanz four years ago with a long-term awareness campaign.
Nicole Ulrich-Neidhardt, President of the Autismus Forum Schweiz, says of the collaboration: "Ruf Lanz always manages surprising approaches to the complex topic. The touching but deliberately unsentimental campaigns have managed to sensitize a large audience. Our website autismforumswitzerland.ch has a massively higher number of visitors today, and even on Facebook almost 8000 people are now interested in our cause. In addition, the campaigns and the many awards we have won have attracted the attention of numerous media outlets, which have taken up the issue. In the meantime, we are even receiving inquiries from organizations in the U.S. that would like to use our campaigns."
Now Ruf Lanz is drawing attention to another facet of autism. People with autism find it difficult to correctly classify other people's facial expressions, gestures and feelings. "Reading facial expressions" is something they have to learn laboriously. Like a complicated foreign language. The new campaign demonstrates this using the example of Chinese kanji characters, which bear a resemblance to human faces. The characters were painted on Japanese paper by calligraphy artist Sylvie Xing Chen according to an ancient tradition. The subjects are used online and offline in various formats and applications.
Responsible at Autismus Forum Schweiz: Nicole Ulrich-Neidhardt (President), Thomas Girsberger, MD (Vice President), Thomas Ulrich, MD, Edith Vogt-Hörler, Susanne Rahman-Wynistorf, Nikola Bellofatto (Board of Directors). Responsible at Ruf Lanz: Markus Ruf, Danielle Lanz (Creative Direction), Isabelle Hauser (Art Direction), Florian Birkner, Markus Ruf (Text), Anita Roth (Consulting). Calligraphy: Sylvie Xing Chen. Photography: Rico Rosenberger.
