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Designing for gender neutrality
How innovative thinking can define the visual future
To create in gender-neutral terms, designers need to look beyond the traditional ways of defining personas. Gender neutrality embodies the idea that society at large, in its policies, language, social structures, and behaviors needs to go beyond stereotyping according to types, identity, and gender roles.
Thus, a gender-neutral persona presents qualities which embrace community, inclusivity, and equality. Language is formulated to be non-gender specific, eliminating the assignment of title, for instance to a specific gender person. Rather, assignment of a title is given to a person, or any person, holding a particular title of distinction, such as chairperson, doctor, police officer, or artist. Gender specificity is no longer the nucleus of the message.
Complementary to language definitions, visual representations need to define an iconic approach to render immediately recognizable symbols connoting these gender-neutral concepts.
Creating icons representing a gender neutral message
The question arises: How can designers address gender neutrality which has been innovated upon and newly defined through language, but not as much through its visual counterpart?
