| Summary: | Uppsala Universitet Sophie Dicksen Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap C-uppsats Abstract Title: Communication of gender through design -A study of shapes and colors of perfumebottles and of the fonts on their labels. (Genuskommunikation genom design -En studie av form, färg och typsnitt på parfymflaskor) Number of pages: 39 (82 including enclosures) Author: Sophie Dicksen Tutor: Mats Lind Course: Media- and Communication Studies C Period: Autumn 2006 University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of information Science,Uppsala University Purpose/Aim: To study whether gender is communicated through design, and if so is the case, the aim is also to see by which aspects gender is communicated. Material/Method: 40 perfumebottles, 20 for women and 20 for men has been studied, and attributes such as their shapes, colors as well as the fonts on their labels has been analyzed in search of gender differences. An art director has also been interwiewed to receive information about genderdesign from a practical wiew. Main results: There is no difference out of a gender perspective between the colors on the bottles in aspect of lightness but colors on ladieperfumes are generally more saturated and they are also more often located among yellow, orange and red shades on the color chart while perfumesbottles for men tend to consist of yellow, green and blue colors in more unsaturated versions. The results of the study of shapes showes that there are more cubes among the male perfumes than there are in the group of womensperfumes. Concidering the study of fonts does results prove that fonts on labels of male perfumes mostly belong to the most common group of fontfamilies. This compared to perfumes for ladies where the the fonts varied between the two current fontgroups of the study, and therefore are bort rare and common. The interwiew with the art director gave that he sees differences between products for women and products for men out of a gender perspective. He claims that most perfumes for women generally have soft shapes, warm colors and scriptlike fonts with the opposite of attributes for men and he argues that those products not fitting in these genderframes are products for women looking more masculine. According to the art director,products for men are more limited when it comes to design as they would rarely approach areas that would be considered as feminine. Keywords: perfume, design, shape, color, font, gender, communication, interview
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