Across advertising and marketing, the LGBTQ+ community are woefully underrepresented. Only 3% of people in ads are from this community with 6 in 10 feeling that they are not well represented in advertising, according to a survey conducted by Channel 4 and YouGov. Inclusive creativity can help to alleviate this feeling of alienation and underrepresentation by delivering and designing products that serve a genuine gap in the market.

This was the thinking behind Every Valentine’s Day, a project launched for Valentine’s Day by Hannah Cunningham and Beth Grace, two creatives from The Gate London. They partnered with the US-based LGBTQ+ charity GLAAD and creatives around the world to create a range of cards that addresses the lack of LGBTQ+ representation on greeting cards.

The 16 designs have been created by illustrators, designers and artists from around the world including individuals from agencies like Havas London as well as brands like ASOS. The creatives designed the digital cards with LGBTQ+ love in mind and they are available for download, with a small donation being made to GLAAD.

Grace and Cunningham said that the project was born out of their frustration around the lack of representation in greeting cards, something that is only amplified by Valentine’s Day: “We struggled to make sense of the fact that on a day that champions love, a whole spectrum of love is being excluded.”

It is a brilliantly important example of the power of cross-industry collaboration to champion authentic, inclusive representation. While it might be sickly for some, or sheer marketing commodity for others; Valentine’s Day is also a chance for people to show their love, in whatever shape or form that takes. Because, as GLAAD's video ends by saying, “love belongs to all of us.”

Visit GLAAD’s website to find out more and to download the cards.