Personal Tutor - Blue

Moving on from the red colour after all the colour theory research. Beginning with the original text layout I began to play with the secondary colour. Using guides and sizing to ensure consistency on both sides.

       

I swapped the black out for a darker blue at first, as the black was very harsh. Now working with the blue I feel more comfortable with the design. The first didn't have a clear tone of voice. Again, it was too contrasting so I stuck with only one colour. The longest part of this process was re-defining the writing as the quality was so low res.

       

I then went on to create some clean, simple icons to use alongside the contact details. In black, they anchored the text and allowed them to stand out. I also added a light weight line to establish the information from 'decoration'.

The last few descions were just the opacity of the text. At 100% it was too distracting, but too little it became grey and unattractive. I'm really happy with tis new version as it is brighter, engaging, simple and clean.

Personal Tutor - Colour Theory

I went back to ultimate design principles to educate myself more about colour and gender, beyond blue and pink. I did this by looking into various colour studies conducted over the past 70 years. Some notes from a 2003 University of Washington research project conducted by student Joe Hallock.

Females

• Top three favourite colours: blue, purple, green
• Top three least favourite colours: orange, brown, grey

Males

• Top three favourite colours: blue, green, black
• Top three least favourite colours: brown, orange, purple

Age

• Among the favourite colours, green decreases in preference as both genders age.
• Among the least favourite colours, orange is increasingly disliked as both genders age.

Surprisingly, the sexes have a lot in common in terms of preferences.

Blue
Joe found that though men prefer blue more than women do, it is a favourite colour of both men and women of all ages. Blue was perceived as either can be strong and steadfast or light and friendly. Long considered a corporate colour, blue – especially dark blue – is associated with authority, intelligence, knowledge, depth and seriousness.

Green
Was favourite colour of men and women, the colour green signifies growth, renewal, health, the environment, balance and stability. Women favour cool, soft shades of green while men prefer clearer, brighter shades.

Purple
Purple is chosen almost exclusively by women as a favourite, and is strongly disliked by men. It is traditionally associated with nobility and power. Because purple is derived from mixing a strong warm colour (red) with a strong cool colour (blue), it has both warm and cool properties.

Black
Considered the negation of colour, black is conservative and goes well with almost any colour except the very dark hues. It also has conflicting connotations. It can be serious, formal and elegant on one hand and powerful, evil and aggressive on yet another.

Gender Differences

From Natalia Khouw's 'The Meaning of Colour for Gender' I looked at male reactions to various colours. Colour does more than just give us objective information about our world-it affects how we feel and react to thing. Dorcus (1926) found yellow had a higher affective value for the men than women and St. George (1938) maintained that blue for men stands out far more than for women. An even earlier study by Jastrow (1897) found men preferred blue to red.

Guilford and Smith (1959) found men were generally more tolerant toward achromatic colours than women. They also found 56% of men preferred cool colours, and 51% men chose bright colours. In a similar study, Plater (1967) found men had a tendency to prefer stronger chromas than women.

Humanity's Favorite Colours

As part of a recent study on gender norms, University of Maryland sociologist Philip Cohen asked nearly 2,000 men and women a simple question: "What's your favourite colour?" Blue turned out to be most popular across the board, followed by green for men and purple for women. The colour preferences break down as follows.

A sample of 1,974 men and women were asked whether they preferred purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, or pink.Credit: Phillip Cohen Family Inequality

Cohen cautioned that he did not survey a random sample of the population, but rather a "convenience sample" of students, faculty and staff at his university, "However, when I controlled statistically for age, race/ethnicity, education level and student status, the gender pattern was basically unchanged, so that helps increase confidence that the result is not too heavily skewed by who I sampled,".

From all this I've concluded that blue is the go to, although 'stereotypical' my choice is valid because science. I think to play with blue and its hues would be a further experimentation to dive into, as it would be a shame not to implement the research into an aspect of the design.

Sources

Eysenck, H. J. (1941). A critical and exprimental study of color preferences. American Journal of Psychology, 54, 385-394.

Guilford, J. P. & Smith, P. C. (1959). A system of color-preferences. The American Journal of Psychology, 73 (4), 487-502.

Guerin, D. A., Park, Y., & Yang, S. (1995). Development of an instrument to study the meaning of color in interior environments. Journal of Interior Design, 20 (2), 31-41.

Plater, G. (1967). Adolescent preferences for fabric, color, and design on usual task. Unpublished master's thesis, Indiana State College, Terre Haute, Indiana.

http://www.joehallock.com/edu/COM498/

http://www.livescience.com/34105-favorite-colors.html

Personal Tutor - Development

At this stage I worked rather quickly, sending drafts and versions of the quote on the card, after trying it in a standard cursive font but it began to look far too structured and 'whimsical'. cursive fonts have an immediate association with femininity. I then figured to render it myself, writing out the quote but my handwriting was not clean and standardised and quickly became the opposite - far too haphazard.

The client then suggested that he write out the quote. His handwriting is already naturally cursive and the idea of that personal touch was very fitting. He sent his writing and I began to work with it, first by re-tracing letters and issues with spacing. 

    

    

I mocked it up on the card and it still look far too rough, I then went back to clean up the letters further, so I was able to use a larger chunk of the writing.

Below are the before and after of the editing process; although subtle, when cleaned as a whole text, it made a huge difference.

From here I stacked the first portion of the quote to create a repeat pattern to use at a lower opacity. I continued to play with the words, in various colours, sizes and opacities until it was clean and minimal. The smaller the type the better it looked. The underlying concept is still there and still strong, despite legibility. I feel the lowest design is the most successful.

Personal Tutor: The Quote

After creating the initial design I felt that it was a bit stagnant, I wanted to make the card more tactile and specific to what my client was offering. I had the idea to create a themed repeat pattern to be used on low opacity, that would better communicate the subject. I ask if this is something he would be interested in. Something to fill the red portion of his card.

Instead it was suggested to use a quote from the syllabus to fill the blank space. I was sent this quote to use and had the client write a small summary explaining their reasons, and concept behind the choice:

MERCRUTIO (cont.)
    Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes.
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage.
This is she—

ROMEO
   Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!
Thou talk’st of nothing.

"The quote is taken from Romeo and Juliet, a set text in the GCSE syllabus. It is employed ironically for a number of reasons: Romeo and Juliet is typically a teenage boys’ worst nightmare; also, Romeo’s quote is “thou talkst of nothing” which is the sentiment of many students, male and female, when studying Shakespeare. For the parents this is handed to, they may see it as a sign of empathy and understanding but also a sign of humour, which is advantageous in the more informal setting of private tutoring."

Choosing a quote from Romeo and Juliet to be used on a what naturally, could be considered a 'masculine' personal identity design for a male client directly confronts the gender stereotypes that English and reading ‘is for girls'. I think this was interesting, and after trying to write this quotes out a few times, I asked if he would write it out in his own writing so I could use actually use his own handwriting, which would have been a personal touch.

Personal Tutor: The Market

The private tutor market is flourishing with the new KS4 curriculum changes. According to a survey completed by EdPlace, the institution was worth £6 billion in 2013. Parents were willing to spend £2,758 on their child’s education (trips, tutors, resources etc.). The Telegraph (source) reported that parents are turning to private tutors due to a lack of ‘adequate support’ for their child at school. This could be down to class sizes and the overall ratio of teachers to students in more disadvantaged areas.

The average private tutor markets themselves online, on Gumtree-style websites, and with business cards. The average private English tutor, with or without a degree and teaching qualification, charges £25-30 per hour. Top tutors, teaching entrance exams for top private schools, can charge up to £120 per hour. Many of the tutors marketing themselves online are subsidising gap years, allowing them to charge English prices which is in their own advantage when travelling most other countries. My client would like to use business cards, as he feels its tactile nature is just better communication, also working in a school, parents evenings and other situations allows him one to one access with parents, in which he could always exchange business cards and offer extra help to other children they may have.

Personal Tutor: Public Education Sector Data

As part of my PPP, I'm looking into teaching as an option for myself and I am applying for teaching assistant places in greater manchester. To better understand his aims of reaching out to male pupils and encourage them to accept extra help with their studies. 

I began to explore public education sector data. In 2011, the BBC reported that one in four (27.2%) primary schools in England had no registered male teachers and that only 12% of primary school teachers are male, information which I found surprising as I didn't thing the divide was so large.

The Education Secretary at the time, Michael Gove, cited a worry of “teacher-pupil contact” being a “legal minefield”. He also expressed concern about the lack of “male role models” for school students of all ages and the need for “male authority figures who can display both strength and sensitivity”. In an attempt to encourage more males to train as teacher, Gove create a “troops to teacher programme” for ex-soldiers. The table below is taken from the DofE website (Main Tables: SFR21/2015). It shows the ratios of male:female teachers in the public sector. The numbers move more towards equilibrium as it moves through to secondary education. However, at a historical best in 2014, males accounted for 36.25% of qualified teachers in public secondary education.

The table below comes from the same DofE document but shows the numbers of Teaching Assistants. Here, the imbalance is clear as men account for only 16.09% of teaching assistants in public secondary education:

The numbers for academies, which all schools will be converted to in the near future, are much almost identical in regards to gender ratio.

This table below shows how many qualified teachers, in each age group, have never been in public education sector service.

The male numbers increased more drastically as the financial crisis eased than for females, showing that more males were seeking refuge from the crisis in teaching.

Perhaps this hints at females being more risk averse in general, seeking the safety of a public career than the unpredictability of a private sector job; whereas men are more risk orientated, possibly driven by the need to be the stereotypical ‘bread-winner’ for their family.




Effects
There has been plenty of articles, debates and opinion expressed on the effects of this imbalance on students’ grades. It is a well-established fact that male students do worse than their female peers and many groups have pointed at the imbalance in gender of teachers.
A phrase not uncommon in education, especially in disadvantaged areas, is “boys lack male role models”. As adult males are seemingly intimidated by the idea of gender stereotypes, teenage males presume that learning is orientated towards females. It is a self-reinforcing cycle.

Personal Tutor: Brief

Brief: To design a business card for a personal english tutor who specialises in KS3 and KS4 with an audience of young male GCSE students

Background Considerations: The client is a 24 year old male, who has been working in schools for a number of years, an unqualified teacher with 6 years experience. His place of work is an all-girls school with OFSTED Outstanding school within an disadvantaged area of Manchester. The client already has experience in private tutoring and wants to branch out into private tutoring to subsidise his salary.

Deliverables: 
Bright, engaging business card that could appeal to young males.