The Bitter Sip
Albert Son
Investigating deeply into prejudice and biased perspectives of looking at the world led my attention to real-life global issues of discrimination which are still prevalent today even though there have been varied efforts made by people who attempted to fight for their rights. After researching a range of different solutions that have been suggested to solve the problem, I realized that there are a few factors that are missing or in need of improvement: First, straight storytelling is too obvious and unidirectional, lacking the involvement of the general public, who are not necessarily interested in these issues. Further, most of solutions deal only with one specific type of discrimination. Then, how can these serious issues be more tangible to general public in their daily lives? How to convey more memorable and impactful messages? Is there a way to design a campaign dealing with every type of discrimination? Here is the answer: The Bitter Sip. The Bitter Sip serves coffee like any other coffee shop, but it gives you a moment to think about serious issues of racism, homophobia, sexism, ableism, ageism and fat discrimination while you’re having a cup of coffee in your daily lives. By creating an environment that evokes real-life situations of people being discriminated, The Bitter Sip offers you hands-on and tangible understanding of these global issues. Image of a hand on the coffee cup suddenly tells a story about racism when filled with different colors of coffee, zero calorie sugar saying ‘for fat people only’ stops you for a second to think about sizeism that you may rarely had a chance to do in your busy lives.