Given the importance of creativity in design education, understanding individual differences will help to teach students in accordance of their aptitude and promote the cultivation of creativity. This study investigates the effect of gender on the creativity scores and artefact perception of first-year design students, and explores the relationship between their creativity and perception. Seventy one first-year design students (38 females) from one University in China took part in this study. Firstly, each participant was asked to create an artefact in an artefact production task; secondly, descriptions of the artefacts were generated by participants in a free categorization task. Then, two experts evaluated the creativity of artefacts generated in the artefact production task using three metrics: novelty and affective characteristics, elaboration characteristics, and design principles. Evaluation results showed that female students scored higher on novelty, affective, and elaboration characteristics, but there was no significant difference between the genders in design principles. Furthermore, principal component analysis was used to construct perceptual models for the two gender groups based on the descriptions generated in the categorization task. Results showed that female students' perceptual model includes design principles, affectivity, style, and novelty factors; male students' perceptual model includes colour combination, design principles, style, and contrast effect factors. These findings suggest that individual creativity and artefact perception are closely related. Pedagogical considerations related to the effects of gender are discussed.