Making sense of the Puzzle – Mahrukh Khizar Printmaking’ 27

In the second week, I began moving from research into the design process. Coming from a printmaking background, I have always felt comfortable thinking through images, composition, and visual language, but I was less confident with the technical side of design software. Instead of letting that become a limitation, I returned to the way I naturally work with sketches, notes, and ideas on paper. I began exploring possible cover images, titles, and ways of visually communicating the information we had gathered.

As I worked through these ideas, I found myself thinking back to my own first experience of menstruation. Through conversations with the women on the team, I also began reflecting on how confusing those early conversations around periods can be. If you understand that menstrual blood comes from the vagina, it can still take much longer to understand its connection to puberty, fertility, pregnancy, and the reproductive system. All of these connections are important for young people to understand, but they are often introduced as separate pieces of information. I wanted the zine to bring those pieces together in a way that felt simple and approachable.

This became the starting point for the title The Period Puzzle. I began imagining the shape of a menstrual pad as a puzzle piece, while also exploring the different shapes and sizes of pads designed for different flows and needs. The puzzle became both a visual concept and a metaphor for the project: taking information that can feel fragmented and bringing the pieces together into something clearer and easier to understand.

At the same time, I was learning that accessibility had to be considered from the very beginning of the design process rather than added as an afterthought. I began researching how the zine could communicate with people who might not be able to access conventional printed text or imagery. I explored the use of QR codes that could link to videos explaining menstrual information in sign language, as well as audio recordings that could be accessed by readers with visual impairments. I also began researching Braille, including the differences and possibilities for both English and Urdu readers. This opened up a whole new layer of thinking for me: accessibility was not simply about making the same information available in another format, but about considering how different people experience, process, and interact with information.

The more I researched, the more I realized that the design of The Period Puzzle needed to be flexible. It had to work not only as a printed object, but as something that could connect to sound, video, touch, and other forms of communication. This became an important part of how I approached the project in the weeks that followed.