OUGD505 Studio Brief 01 Product, Range and Distribution Cirt and Feedback on Research Study Task 02

A group crit for this brief so far turned up a lot of positive feedback and extra direction. A concern of mine was the direction my research had inadvertently taken: quite self serving, all to really figure out where I personally stand on the issue of feminism. This meant that the dominant connecting aspect of my research was defining feminism and as such was quite widely spread and sometimes in my opinion lacked narrative structure when communicated outwards. However, despite this, the crit when surprisingly well. This was mostly down to the structure of the crit and its informality, allowing me to just talk openly about my research and the angle I wanted to take on the practical outcome for this brief.

Defining the word feminism took up a lot of my research and then, a perceptibly separate part of my research was defining what feminism is to me. A lot of stigma comes along with the word feminist. Because of this lots of people are reluctant to define themselves as feminists or even accept the word. But, I think the problem is right there! No one should have to 'define' themselves as anything, put themselves in a box and say 'these are my beliefs' they 'define me'. More than anything else in my research, I learned that feminism is not a set of beliefs that you must adhere to, it is not restraining, by its very nature it is liberating. Feminism is a discussion, something that wants to initiate thought at an individual and international scale. Feminism is an initiator, a catalyst for a society that wants to better its self.

The idea I introduced in the crit was that I wanted to redefine the word feminist and open it up for discussion. To give it an edge of positivity and humor and more of a feeling of the people that the movement is all about.

A number of people brought up the idea of looking into women's rights around the word and how feminism could be more of an international thing. To a certain extent, I have covered this through a number of the talks I found on issues such as FGM and honor killings in Pakistan. However, this will not stop me from considering this as part of the outcome. A point of interest in this that also came up was the difference between culture and cruelty and how other societies can interfere in the traditions of others if cruelty is occurring in their culture. There were some great suggestions of being wary of creating a submissive message through the use of humor in the campaign, don't loose the passion of a self riotous movement because that is something that appeals to many feminists and you do not want to alienate the existing audience. Some suggestions for further research were la domination masculine and codes of gender, films that open up the discussion of gender roles.

These are the design boards I presented as part of study task 2 and the research that I undertook came under the 'things you need to know about...' section of the tasks and are tagged as study task 2.

An expansion on my investigation of make up and feminism was also suggested, looking further into the advertising of make up and how it is portrayed in the media. This could be a great project, playing on the reasons people wear make up and how this can be both positive and negative at an individual level.

Overall this was great feedback and I know I want to go in the direction of re defining feminism and what people believe it to be. So, the next stage is some idea generation and then some more focussed research perhaps.