Movember

Movember is a campaign which encourages man to grow moustaches during the month of November. The aim of the campaign is to raise awareness of various men’s health issues such as men’s suicide, prostate and testicular cancer, and depression among others. Movember is run by the Movember Foundation, a multinational charity based in Australia but active in 21 countries, that spreads awareness and collects money for men’s health. They aim to make men’s health equally important globally as it is important to always be alert on one’s health.

Movember begins way back to the word “Moustache”, which is of French origin and is derived from the Italian word “moustacio” during the 14th Century, “mostaccio” in the 16th century, “moustaccium” in the 8th century medieval latin, and “moustakion” in the 9th century medieval greek which ultimately means “upper lip” or “facial hair”. Moustaches are formed during the adolescent stage in males and is normally tended through shaving to prevent it from being a full beard. The appropriate tools used in shaving a moustache is safety razors and moustache foam cream. Shaving moustaches have been long practiced, as far back to the Neolithic period where stone razors was technologically possible.

Moustaches are mentioned in many cultures, often about the need to shave it off. In Islam, numerous narrations of Hadith (sayings of Muhammad) addresses personal hygiene, which includes facial hair maintenance. Muhammad advised that men must grow beards, but as for the moustaches, cut the longer hairs as to not let them cover the upper lip. This is because keeping moustaches short and trimmed is a well-established tradition in many Muslim societies. The same goes for Amish people who grows out their beards immediately after marriage but continues to shave their upper lips. The Mormon culture also practices the same, as having moustaches is considered a taboo for them due to church missionaries being required to be clean-shaven. This becomes a social norm with the church which leads to its members who chooses to keep moustaches feels that they don’t fit the norm.

Countries like India takes pride in having moustaches. India’s history is inexorably linked to whiskers, which symbolise masculinity. When the British military came along, they had an enormous effect, which was the Victorian moustache styles were adopted, refined, and finally preserved by the India military. However, the younger urban Indians currently prefers a clean-shaved face. They believe that women prefer a clean-shaved men rather those will long, overly grown moustaches. The youngsters believe moustaches are outdated and represents all aspects of the “old” India and that they are trying to leave it behind by refusing to keep moustaches and beards. This act causes the new generation to no longer be part of Movember, and therefore, the campaign loses its awareness touch.

Movember is actively done is other places such as Beijing, China. While not real fully adapted, Beijing has its own variation of Movember, known as Maovember, which started on 2012,and is also done in the month of November. The aim of Maovember is to raise money for Orbis, an organisation that works to treat blindness among the elderly. During the month of November, various activities and events, normally are fundraising events, are held to raise the funds for Orbis. According to Wilson in 2015, the Maovember campaign “raised enough money to fund 131 cataract surgeries for men in rural China.” As there are not much of campaigns for men’s health around China, it made sense for the people to actively participate in Maovember to support Orbis.

However, the Movember campaign in Malaysia is not active enough in spreading awareness among Malaysians. Based on an ongoing survey among Malaysians, more than half of them does not know what Movember nor its objectives is. On their opinion on the matter, they believe that there is not enough of campaigns and promotions that highlights the importance of Movember. Most of the respondents, ages ranged from 18 to 21, only knew about Movember through taking the survey. They stated that the country is not effective enough in this campaign and needs to put more effort into it to grab people’s attention. While majority were not aware of Movember, they agreed that a minority of Malaysians, mostly their closed ones, knew and practiced Movember. About the problem, almost half of the respondents agrees that the awareness of Movember can be effective through an illustrated book, quoting one of the respondents, “being able to see or visualize things deepens understanding and creates context for discussion. We are more likely to remember things if we see, hear and mull over it with other people”. They prefer to see visuals then reading about it. Just take a look at some of my survey results here:

The intended outcome of the Movember campaign is to create a silent interactive book that tells a story of a guy that grows his moustache during a period of time. The intended target audience are teenagers and young adults of ages between 15 to 25 years old. While the silent interactive book is meant to be for all genders, it is specifically towards males of 15 to 25 years old that grows a moustache. The aim of the silent interactive book is to tell a story to the audience about growing a moustache and relation to Movember to encourage them to have conversations among each other about the campaign. It also aims to make the audience question their doubts and to raise their awareness on the subject.

Click on the button to get access to the proposal:

In order to start the project, I did some mind maps and did research on the different cultures that has connection to moustaches, along with some sketches.

While sketching my ideas, I also conducted interviews from people to find out their knowledge about Movember and whether they knew what and why Movember is done.

From the interview, I learn that most people are either not aware of the existence of Movember, or they are aware, but do not know the objectives and the reasoning behind the awareness. This further made me realise how important it is to create the silent interactive book to raise awareness of Movember.

I than started to brainstorm some ideas for the book.

At the same time, I did more random sketches to prepare for my storyboard.

I than started to create my storyboard for the book once I knew what the story was going to be. The story of the silent interactive book starts with a male of an unspecific age growing his moustache. The moustache in the silent interactive book are cutouts placed into the book upon printing that can be taken out and played around. As the story progresses, the moustache would grow longer, but the male protagonist would not shave the moustache. Once it has overly grown to a point that it needs to be shaved, he goes to a saloon to shave it off but finds a group of people that are not able to grow moustaches. He would than donate his shaven moustaches to the group of people, all now having their own different styles of moustaches. At the end of the story, the Movember campaign will be revealed to the readers, and they will experience realisation.

Once I confirmed with the storyboard, I started to plan out on how to create the book. I intend to create the characters by painting them, so started some drafts.

Once I did the first section of the book, I scan the paintings and transferred them into Photoshop to make the paintings look presentable. I than painted the remaining half of the book.

Similar to the first section, I scan the paintings and transferred them to Photoshop to make them better. While doing this, I also painted the front cover and did the same like the others and edited it in Photoshop. One everything was done, I printed a smaller prototype using my home printer to see how the layout looks like.

While working on this book, I also had to make a concept map that links my Statement of Intent to this project. This is the finished version:

After the prototype, I painted out the moustaches for the silent interactive book (which would be made as 3D visuals) and transferred them to Photoshop to make them look better.

The moustaches will be cut out and can be removed or placed back into the pages in the book. This is how the final outcome of the silent interactive book looks like: