Gender - such an inseparable part of our world that it seems natural and goes without questioning. However, come to think of it and you'll see how deeply ingrained gender biases limit us throughout our lives. All our choices, what we wear, the way we eat, how big we allow ourselves to dream are impacted by gender conditioning in some way or another and no matter what your gender, these rules make you feel like you aren't enough at some point or another.


Research shows that gender conditioning begins from the womb itself. From the time that people are aware of the sex of their baby, their behaviours towards them begin to change. Subjected to continuous gender conditioning, children absorb these gender rules by the age of 3-4 and begin to propagate the same ideas by the age that they start school i.e 5-6 years old. For this reason, I decided to make a book to intervene before concrete gender conditioning sets in instead of trying to undo the effects of gender later.





The Process



Designing a character was very challenging for me this time because I had to design gender neutral characters that would represent the twins.



I wanted to make sure I design a character that would confuse people, that wasn't governed by gender biases and not identifiable as either girl or boy. I made sure you couldn't tell which one of the twins was a boy and which one was a girl on the basis of appearance and used gender neutral names too.



These are the characters I finalized. I also had a lot of fun experimenting with a new illustration style and enjoyed it thoroughly. I loved the child like, imperfect illustrations I made with loud colours and splashing backgrounds. This took me back to my childhood and I experienced a new sense of freedom in my work.



For the book to flow well, I finalized my poetry piece and started making lo-fi frames to get a quick and rough idea of how all the spread would come to look together.



Once satisfied, I made detailed sketches of each spread, laying out my illustration and leaving space for text. I finalized the same digitally and played with typography to get the desired outcome.



Designing Activities



For the second part of the book, I designed a few activities. This began with a lot of prototyping, testing and reiterating.



Here is an example of one of the activities I conducted with the children. I made two cards, one in pink and one in blue. Tell me, which one is pink and which one is blue?



They are actually magic cards! As I told the kids I was conducting activities with. When you scratch the surface, their true colours are disclosed. This reflects that our appearance doesn't decide who we are from within. Just because someone thinks you're a boy because you have short hair, doesn't make you a boy. Gender assumptions don't define us or change who we are.



I poured my heart and soul into this project and have never felt more strongly about a topic before so serves me right that this was my final graduation project. I researched in great detail, studied my target audience and did my absolute best to break down such a complex topic and deliver it in a fun way that can be grasped by young children. I felt so much joy working with my target audience and feel proud to be aware myself and to be educating others as well.



I'd love to hear your feedback.


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