Illustration in response to the written word 
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Project 04

​Your brief is to identify a problem that, to your mind, needs to be fought against, that needs to be given attention and that would benefit from a wider awareness.
This could be a global issue like those mentioned above or it could be a small and more local concern. You are going to create the materials which will be used to protest against your chosen injustice and inform those less familiar with it - importantly, the materials you create should available to be used by anyone, anywhere, to join the fight. This is your 'Protest Pack™'
A large part of this project is about finding creative solutions to the most obvious problems - how does someone go from accessing your work onscreen to being able to interact with it physically. For example, if you create a placard design, how will your audience actually make a placard from it? In this example, as well as the placard itself, you will also need to create instructions explaining the process you've devised.
Of course, a placard is the most obvious item to create as part of a 'Protest Pack™' but what else might be utilised in to inform, inspire and unite? Here, again, is the need for creative thinking. 

Outcome 
- A 'Protest Pack™' that can be accessed online 
- All back up work (research, ideas generation & refinement, and process exploration/WIP shots) 

Initial idea
For my protest pack, I have chosen to protest against sexism in gaming spaces, predominantly in TTRPG spaces. This is a topic that has been widely discussed and has a far reaching impact, and it is very personal to me as actively engage in TTRPG gaming spaces. 

What does TTRPG mean?

TTRPG means "table top role playing games", and refers to a type of pen and paper games such as Dungeons and Dragons, Call Of Cthulhu, Cyberpunk, and Vampire: The Masquerade. 
A lot of these games were initially produced and reached fame in the 80's, but in the last decade TTRPG's have become increasingly popular and more mainstream once again. This is mostly due to popular livestreamed games such as Critical Role or Dimension 20. These types of rpg's have been popularised so much that Critical Role was able to produce a fully animated tv show on Amazon.

However, even despite the rising popularity in these types of games, there is still sexism rampant within the gaming community. This can be seen in spaces as large and popular as Critical Role, where player Marisha Ray was heavily bullied online for her character, Keyleth, in their 1st campaign. it can also be found in spaces as small as my collage DnD campaign - where my friend and I were criticised for not playing support roles like "girls were meant to".

I initially began by sketching out some concepts for pins. I decided to focus on the typical symbols associated with TTRPG's such as dice and swords, as well as the female gender symbol. I combined these ideas into a series of sketches for circular badges. 
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I then picked my four favourite and developed them more.
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I then added some colour to the final designs. The goal was to make them simple and easy to read, as well as easy to print out in case people wanted to create buttons with the designs.

 
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I then sketched out come concepts for some stickers.

I quickly realised that the female gender symbol has a T hidden within, so I decided to incorporate this into the word TTRPG.

I also wanted to use the acronym D and D in a fun way, so I played with snappy statements that are easily memorable. 

 

I also attempted to create some posters that could be easily printed out and stuck around.