When creating The Progressive Tube Map, I took inspiration from Gilbert Baker, a gay man and drag queen (both openly) and artist created the first rainbow flag back in 1978. Baker's design attached meanings to the colours: hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for art, indigo for serenity and violet for spirit. However, due to a production issue the pink and turquoise stripes were removed and indigo was replaced by light blue - this was the beginning of the six-striped flag which is still in circulation today, as the symbol for LGBTQ+ pride.
With my NHS Gender Care Pathway map I need to use a lot more colours: diagnosed, not diagnosed, assessment, masculine options, feminine options, testosterone, estrogen, top surgery, lower surgery, voice therapy... the list goes on, but there's a lot.
My main concern is not having one side be too "masculine" appearing and one too "feminine", maybe one blue and one pink on each side but otherwise more neutral colours like purple, green, orange, turquoise - it may just be my opinion that these colours are neutral, but we'll see if there's any complaints. I think the idea of a colour having gender connotation's is silly now and will happily wear a pink shirt or jumper, but at 10 I would kick and scream at having to put on anything pink so!
I can see both sides of the argument, but there are limited colours that are different enough to display altogether on one map and that I can place next to each other then without them looking too similar. Ideally I don't want colours of the same light/darkness next to each other as, although I'm not colour blind and don't know anyone who's colour-blind to test, I'm hoping the colours look different enough for a visually impaired person to tell the difference.
Below are images of me trying to layout my Sharpie options to create a balanced layout for everything I needed to cover. Creating the map by hand due to the limitations of my surgery means I'm also limited to the colour options available physically rather than using a digital colour mixer.
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