introduction draft

Ahead of my first tutorial, I thought it would be useful to create a rough draft of the structure of my essay given the feedback from the presentations. I wanted to have a clear structure and understanding of my essay before the tutorial which could then be discussed and improved.

Does Graphic Design influence children’s perception of gender and identity? 

An investigation of children’s editorial through ages 7-11. 

Throughout this investigation I will be looking at how children’s editorial has an effect on their perception of gender and identity through primary research and specified reading.

This paper will be broken down into chapters to distinguish between the factors that may take effect on a child’s perception of gender and identity, which include the development and psychology of children, gender and identity studies, colour theory and examples of editorial design available to children. Therefore, crucial to my methodology is primary research in the form of interviews and observations to determine what aspects have an influence on the child’s development.

Chapter one will look into the psychology behind child development and lay a foundation of understanding towards the way children perceive gender and identity. The main focus of this chapter will be the psychological theories, not necessarily linked to gender or graphic design. The main influences of this chapter are Smith, Cowie and Blades (2011) with their textbook Understanding Children’s Development. 

Chapter two will discuss the broad strokes of gender development and identity and highlight any links to graphic design. Key influences of this chapter are Benwell and Stoke (2006), Gauntlett (2002) and Golombock, Fivush (1994). To fully understand the way children perceive gender and identity it is important to firstly understand why they think this way. Primary research will also feature within this chapter, with interviews, surveys and observations taking place. The primary research will be taken from children aged 7-11 and will ask them questions about specific magazines, colours and content which link to their attitude towards gender. The design of this research will be a cross-sectional design, where different age groups are looked at simultaneously. Ideally, the research would be a cohort design which allows us to look at historical change following different children born at different times, but due to time restrictions, the cross-sectional design is the best fit. 

Following on from a broad range of research chapter three will look specifically at editorial design, comparing and contrasting magazines, novels and other types of activity books. This will determine, with results from the primary research whether these types of graphic design are inherently linked with gender and identity. 

Chapter four will be an analysis of popular children’s magazine, Anorak. Anorak is inherently gender neutral and designed by a professional illustrator and graphic design team. Looking at this magazine closely will form my closing argument about whether editorial design influences children’s perception.