Catalogue of Partial Things

to explore menstrual equity

The Catalogue of Partial Things is a zine in which we share a series of ideas that were developed over the course of several design workshops on the topic of Maintaining the Menstruating Body. During these meetings, groups of health workers, activists and community members worked together to collaboratively investigate limitations to current products, services and systems in ways that may reveal paths to new designs or policies aimed at providing more ready and reliable access to menstrual hygiene resources.

Visualizing equitable access to menstrual health resources

Our workshop participant generated a range of ideas: from policies and initiatives to products and services. My team iterated on these ideas through various ways of making. We used physical prototyping, illustration, data visualization to communicate our participants’ ideas, which are ultimately documented in the catalogue.

Working together as a small but mighty in-house production team, we printed, folded, and bound over 50 zines. Distributing the finished zine to our workshop participants brought the project full circle. We viewed the zine as a living object, encouraging recipients to respond, edit, and build upon these ideas.

Designing to create comfort and invite conversation

For a topic that is typically considered taboo, it was important for our work to create comfort and invite open conversation. We wanted our graphics to feel warm, inclusive, and as gender-neutral as possible. Our hopes to de-stigmatize menstrual health informed everything from how we designed the workshop questions to the project’s look and feel.