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Beauty Marks
Name
Alberte Mille Almsig
Education degree
Kandidat
Fagfelt
Design
Institute
Design and Visual Interaction
Program
Visual Design and Interaction, Graphic Communication Design
Year
2026
How can we become aware of the traces sunlight leaves through daily exposure? At a time when melanoma rates continue to rise globally, and Denmark remains among the countries with the highest incidence rates in the world, the campaign Beauty Marks approaches melanoma awareness as a question of perception by exploring how risk can be overlooked through familiarity. It proposes an alternative to traditional awareness campaigns through attention and and how awareness can exist within everyday life.
Developed through field research in Australia and Denmark, the project explores how awareness can emerge through noticing rather than alarm. Using sun exposure as part of the image-making processes, visual storytelling, and applications across public, digital, and cultural contexts, Beauty Marks transforms exposure into something people can see, experience, and reflect upon.
At the visual core of the project are cyanotype and anthotype processes, where sunlight itself becomes part of the creation of the image. Exposure is not only represented, but also actively produces the visual outcome. Anthotype, with its warm yellow tones, became the project’s primary material language, evoking sunlight, pigmentation, and caution.
Melanoma often begins as a small change in an existing mole. Denmark has one of the highest melanoma rates in the world.
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The vision is not to replace existing health communication, but to create an additional layer of awareness that exists where exposure takes place for instance in parks, festivals, events, public spaces, beaches and everyday encounters. If awareness is a perceptual problem, it should not only exist within health campaigns. It should be embedded in everyday culture, appearing in the places, behaviours, and environments where sun exposure naturally occurs.
Beauty Marks demonstrates how design can function not only as a tool for communication, but as a tool for shaping attention. By turning invisible exposure into visible traces, it offers a new model for health awareness, one rooted in culture, perception, and everyday life.
Campaign Posters
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We made moles sound prettier. Maybe that’s the problem.
Anthotype printing process
The Royal Danish Academy supports the Sustainable Development Goals
Since 2017 the Royal Danish Academy has worked with the Sustainable Development Goals. This is reflected in our research, our teaching and in our students’ projects. This project relates to the following UN goal(-s)
