Summative Statement

Throughout this research project, I have been investigating gender roles and gender identity from the perspective of an intersectional feminist. With the written aspect of the project, I focused on how feminism and the media affect gender roles and gender identity, so with the practical work, I really wanted to focus on how children specifically can be educated on such issues.

Although the proposal for the practical work changed a lot throughout the duration of the project, the aim and target audience always remained the same. This is because I think in order to tackle the issue of gender learning and gender equality; children need to be educated on the fact that gender is not as straight forward as just male and female. As gender is typically associated with colour, especially at a younger age, I thought producing a colouring book would be the best way to demonstrate that everybody should have a choice in how they define their own gender. Having the freedom to select their own colours for the activities in the book means that each child would have a different representation of what they define as masculine and feminine. As gender is also linked to jobs and social roles, the colouring book features illustrations of men, women or androgynous characters in positions one would not usually expect due to gender socialization - for example, a female mechanic.

What I have learnt from my exploration in this project is that combating gender equality is not just an issue for women. Although women have the right to be empowered, perhaps we should be focusing more on empowering individuals for having the courage to display their own definitions of attributes such as femininity, regardless of gender identity.

Final Outcome

I am really pleased with the end product of this module and I'm glad I had the foresight to pick a topic I'm so passionate about. If I had more time for print and production, I would definitely spend more time crafting the pack and creating another book or some activity posters. The target audience I chose was out of my comfort zone and having to select colours (for the covers) in relation to this concerned me - after all, I wasn't designing this pack for myself, so I couldn't necessarily go with my personal preferences.

Visual Development Work

Throughout this project I have felt pretty blind when it came to the direction my work was going in. I had a lot of different ideas for potential outcomes, so when I did finally narrow it down, I thought I had wasted a lot of time being indecisive. In retrospect however, I can see the direction of my work throughout my sketchbook has been centered around the visual signals we use to communicate gender.

My initial drawings were in response to some of the reading I was doing for the essay (Pretty in Punk by Lauraine Leblanc). I was interested in how punk girls challenged gender norms by adopting typically masculine attributes. I really like how these were rendered and I can see how it influenced the way I produced the final outcome.

In the next set of drawings I was investigating a similar concept, only this time I was trying to juxtapose typical masculinity with femininity. The small use of colour here lead me to consider how we associate colour with gender and as an extension of that, how shapes and patterns can communicate masculinity or femininity.

Taking into consideration the visual signals we look for to define a gender, I began drawing somewhat androgynous characters. As my target audience (children) has remained the same throughout, I drew child like characters so that the audience would have something they could relate to. As I moved onto exploring activities/toys typically associated with gender, the work really started to take shape. Extending the exploration of toys/activities that children are interested in, I decided to investigate how adults genders may or may not affect their jobs and roles within society.

Last minute ideas

I've been thinking about what I can propose with my work. Since the deadline is tomorrow, I doubt I'll actually be able to produce anything more, but I still have a few ideas. 

Whilst looking over the practical outcome, I realised I haven't really included any facts/info specifically about gender.. so although I've had good feedback on it and everybody else says it makes sense, I feel as if it's somewhat flawed. Perhaps I should propose an additional booklet, which would be more information based (but still digestible for the young audience). I'll be happy if I can produce a cover and maybe a mock up of two inside pages, just to communicate the idea a bit better.

Final Outcome Photographs

Since I spent a lot of time trying to make a good quality finished product, I definitely want to have nice photos of it, so I'm being a little more critical of which ones I use on the final presentation boards. As of yet, I still haven't decided how to fasten the pack and I'm not sure I like how its tied in the photographs.. Maybe using a hole-punch to put the string through would look better than wrapping it around the whole thing?

As there's probably some information in these pictures that isn't really needed, I'm going to go through and crop them - this way each frame will focus exactly on what I want it to and hopefully help make my presentation boards look more concise.

Final Crit Feedback Evaluation

Feedback from the crit was all good and they didn't point out any changes I need to make and judging from the comments they understood my intentions/where the idea came from, which is reassuring!
The only suggestions made were to do with presentation boards and how I can take the practical further.

Before submission I want to look at how the colouring/activity book can be adapted into a tablet app. Since children have more access to tablets or similar technology nowadays, it would make the activities more accessible to a wider audience - it also means that they would have a choice with how they could engage with it.

Action plan between now and submission:

• Photograph finished work for presentation boards
• Finish writing statement of synthesis
• Produce app mock-ups for boards and possibly a short animation
• Research/produce potential distribution/contexts (where it would be sold or used)

Presentation Boards So Far

After the crit tomorrow I'm going to revisit these boards. I want to include some good photographs of the finished product, including the packaging and pack of crayons. I also want to produce some mock-ups or proposals for how I could take this work further, since there's still a week until submission. The most important board at the moment is the one explaining the concept behind the colouring book, so hopefully the feedback tomorrow will let me know whether or not I've explained it well enough.

Presenting the final product

I got everything printed today and I'm really happy with how it came out. I was initially worried about which type of paper to use but I found a good matte stock that wasn't too thick and felt like just the right texture to colour on. If I were to print again I think I'd use a slightly thicker stock for the cover. The one used was thicker than the interior pages, but not by that much. I used the same thicker stock for the card envelope I want to encase everything in, which again, could have done with being a little thicker. 

Cover & Packaging

I felt like the previous cover needed something adding to it.. so I added a bit of texture and then carried this over to the packaging for the crayons and a kind of envelope to hold it all together. I'm pleased with the consistency of the designs, I just hope they look okay once printed and assembled.

Almost there!

I finally got everything assembled! Since the whole of the inside is black and white, I wanted to use some bright colours on the cover - after all the target audience is children, so it needs to look attractive (especially as it's supposed to be educational but not boring).

I feel like I'm in quite a difficult position at the moment because I won't get any feedback on this until Friday, but I have to print it tomorrow (Thursday).. So I'm just going to have to have a bit of confidence that it looks okay.. Any feedback I get on Friday I can just propose to alter I suppose.

Now all that's left to do is create some sort of packaging for this and the crayons I want to present with it!

Paper-doll drawings

For the last section of the activity book I wanted to put in a paper-doll so that the child can decorate it to match their preferences, rather than being given an existing colour scheme or set of gendered clothes. I've tried to include a range of clothing and hairstyles that can be coloured in, but I'm also going to put in a page with a template so that they can draw their own.

Having pages that will be cut into means I'll have to account for that when I assemble the InDesign document and have a few blank pages.

As well as the paper-doll, I had a talk with Patrick who suggested I find a way to add more layers to the colouring pages because I felt like they were lacking something.. We discussed looking up some facts to go with the images and creating some sort of task involving the use of colour to categorise the toy pages. 

still to do:

• research facts to go with images
• research colour/gender associations in various cultures
• create front and back covers
• assemble InDesign document 
• design some sort of packaging

Pages progress

These are the colouring pages I'm happy with so far. I think adding more to the compositions (like a bit of background) has really helped improve them compared with my earlier drawings in this post.

For these I have chosen to draw jobs/professions that are typically associated with or occupied by a specific gender. I think it would be unrealistic to try and draw every gender identity in each of these occupations, so I've just drawn the opposite of what most people would expect. For example, the stay at home father - although not uncommon these days, throughout history part of the male role has been to be a 'provider' for their family. What I am trying to show with these images is that both sexes, regardless of what gender they identify with, can chose whatever type of career or role they want to.

As these drawings took much longer than I initially anticipated, I don't think I'll be able to get 32 done as I was originally aiming for. The next category I want to tackle is clothing/appearance, so I think I'm going to draw a gender neutral paper-doll for the audience to customise/make their own. I plan to spread the paper doll and all the according accessories/clothing over four pages with instructions on how to make it more durable since the stock won't be thick enough for it to stand on it's own.

As I'm coming up with ideas for the drawings, I'm noticing that the last chapter of my essay has really informed the practical content. In the last chapter I've written about depictions of gender roles, the use of pink/colour and body image - all of which are turning out to be key elements in this colouring pack. E.g the drawings of different genders in various jobs/roles covers the depiction of gender roles, the interactive colouring aspect covers the use of colour in regards to gender and for body image I am producing a paper doll.