In September 2021, I worked with Paint It Red on an activity book for children. The book’s intention was to educate about menstrual health.
Stigmas and misinformation were
tackled with the help of the mascot,
Red-dy. I designed her as a charming female teacher character that children would identify with. Giving this treatment to a drop of blood is an attempt to reconfigure how children are
introduced to menstrual blood.
The process involved planning the illustrations and composition of each page, based on the content. It was a fun challenge to adapt illustrations and layouts according to context
specific requirements.
For example, in the page below, the illustration had to display all parts of the body, because of how diverse pain related symptoms of menstruation are.
It was also an interesting challenge to design the activities in as intuitive a way as possible. The idea was to let children understand them with as few instructions as possible, so that children from across a wide range of reading abilities can engage with them.
The text began with English and has so far been translated into Telugu, Hindi and Bengali.
