Project Brief: Spring Fever
Talking to Your Child about Sex and Relationships
PROJECT STATEMENT
I’m making a book for parents/caretakers so that they can learn how to talk about sex/sexuality with their children.
OVERVIEW
Content
Parents will learn how and when to start talking to their children about sex and relationships based on Planned Parenthood’s “There’s No Place Like Home… For Sex Education”.
The content will involve:
• the sharing of family values
• how to provide accurate information to children
• teaching their kids to build effective decision-making skills
• how to counteract negative and exploitive sexual messages in the media
Audience
The primary audience will be millennial parents that are either planning on having kids or currently have children younger than age 3.
Format
Print piece. The audience is educated and literate. This format lends itself to larger amounts of nuanced text and is a more personal medium. However, I love the accessibility of the internet and would like to create a secondary website if time permits.
Immediate Outcome
Parents feel more competent and confident and begin having conversations about sex and relationships with their children.
Intermediate Outcome
Kids will grow up in a more sex-positive home and ultimately have safer, healthier, and more satisfying sex lives as adults.
Ultimate Outcome
Reduction of harm and shame
INVESTIGATION PLAN
Questions
- Is this elitist/classist? Does this exclude working-class families that don’t have the time to read/research this topic?
- Many kids will avoid talking about sex with their parents? How can we make children more comfortable having this conversation? OR are children actually comfortable having these discussions, but are mirroring discomfort they see in other places?
- How can I make this engaging and fun without being too clinical or serious? Illustrations? Images?
- How can I make this book cost-efficient while maintaining a sense of high quality?
- HOW WILL I MAKE THIS?
Resources/Content
- Content will be pulled from Advocates For Youth
- Netherlands: Long Live Love
Research Methods
- Interviews w/ both Parents and Kids
- Interviews w/ Teachers
- Reading (Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex)
- Talking to Health and Sexuality Professors
- User Testing for Parents
EXPECTED DELIVERABLES
Summer 2019
- Collect all content, create an outline, begin to flesh out how the book can be structured/organized
- Learning about bookbinding options. Email past DAAP grads that have made books. Email Cryptogram.
- Meet with Health and Sexuality professor, Carol Peterson. See what feedback she might have.
- Decide on size.
- Decide on expected materials for the final product. Ideally, should be scalable enough for multiple copies.
- Begin researching appropriate typefaces
- Begin a tentative grid
- Begin visual explorations… 2 sessions of 10 images on letter sized paper. Experiment with mediums and styles.
Spring 2020
- Play with styles of type/photo/illustration. Create a MINIMUM of 5 directions to pick from. Potentially make one page per style.
- Pagination… talk to people about structuring a book in InDesign. Maybe Matt Wizinsky can help?
- Decide on one visual direction and create a type of standards document.
- Implement grid.. make sure it is working with the copy and the length of the headers
- Begin to combine type standards with copy and grid! I expect this to take the bulk of time… possibly two months.
- User test, see how parents respond. Test legibility.
- Finishing the book digitally!
- Look into what website will be used to host. The website will promote the book/space for a potential PDF version
- The last month should be dedicated to creating the book.
- Creating the final book will involve:
- testing print colors
- double checking for spelling errors
- testing type size - Finish book
- Create Capstone Final Show Poster
- Have condoms made to promote the book?
ADDITIONAL SOURCES
S/O to Cara Sortino for that resource^
