Essay - The hidden women of design

How can we encourage the hidden women of design into the spotlight?
Lorna Allan

Hidden Women of Design is an initiative aiming to increase the visibility of female designers in the industry, through talks, workshops and events. Ahead of its next event, ReAct, celebrating the power of design to effect change, founder Lorna Allan writes on the beginnings of her campaign and its continued importance.

Hidden Women of Design seems quite a contentious and provocative title when I think about it now. It was about 9.45pm in the LCC library, almost closing time, and I needed to give this project a title. It eventually came when I asked myself, what is it when you can’t find something? It’s hidden. It can be exciting to discover hidden things – a nice little bar around the corner, a fiver between your receipts – but not when it’s the work of amazing female designers that changed the course of design history, that many of us haven’t heard of.

Starting this project, I was quite shocked at some of the stats I came across. Simple Google searches of famous graphic designers came up with an overwhelming majority of men; the winners of design awards were mostly men; I looked into design studios that were run by a female/male partnership, and who do you think got the most hits out of these two designers? The male counterpart, by a long shot. When I started to gather the work of female designers and show it to my peers and explain, this was done by a woman, it was largely met by surprise – it was 2016, why were people still shocked that a woman can design?

Initially, the aim of the project was to profile designers of the past and create a campaign to raise awareness of their work, which is still very important to us, but our main focus has shifted. Now we want to move forward and look at future female talent and representation. How can we encourage and support female designers in qualifying and moving into the industry? How can we help them progress in their careers without compromising life choices? There does appear to be more women taking up employment as designers, but scratch the surface and you see that those roles are still at a junior level. The further up the ladder you go, the less women in senior roles you will find. In fact, The World Economic Forum predicts that it will still be another 116 years until the gender gap is removed completely.

Graphic BirdWatching was an initiative that looked to deal with gender representation in the design industry that ran from 2009-2014, and in an Eye magazine interview with co-founder Ann-Kristina Simon in 2010, I found one of the answers really interesting: “Have you experienced discrimination?” asked the interviewer. “I don’t think I have experienced discrimination in terms of someone else getting something I want,” Ann-Kristina said, “but I maybe made myself a bit smaller, was a little insecure.” A statistic from Graphic Designers Surveyed in 2015 showed that only eight percent of women are comfortable showing their work. It’s quotes like these that make me believe that support and encouragement could go a long way to helping the situation, through mentorship programmes, skill sharing, and having practical resources for preparing students for the industry, as a start.

I myself have received an incredible amount of support for this project from Kathleen Sleboda and Tori Hinn from the Women of Graphic Design website, Nat Maher from Kerning the Gap, Sian Cook from Women’s Design and Research Unit, Ruth Sykes from Graphics UK Women, Joanna Choukeir from Uscreates, even an email from Ellen Lupton to name a few. Not to mention all the designers that gave up their time to talk at our events in their practice. Learning from their honest discourse through the talks have helped me to celebrate the failures as well as the successes as all part of the process. This has opened the door to me to connect with projects further afield too, such as And she was like: BÄM, and Depatriarchise Design. There is real momentum happening, a sisterhood supporting and helping each other. We all have the same goal and we all want to help each other reach it.

He, she, it ... 

Women and the problems of gender in the history of graphic design - introduction to the short biographies 

Julia Meer

'Anyone who wanders through the classes of our art academies is surprised by the high percentage of women among the students. This proportion stands in absolute contrast to the number of women that are found among practising designers.' - Spondé

Social expectations are preventing women from investing as much time and energy in their design work as men, and that have discouraged them from publicising their work and thereby establishing a reputation, comes the fact that contemporary criticism often disputes women's capacity for creative 'genius'. 

'Truly feminine combination of naivety and sophistication [...]. Such designs harbour a heartfelt joy in the liberation from all aspects of everyday logic, such as only a grown child can feel.' - Hans Hildebrandt

'Feminine' limit them in a twofold manner: first, female designers are reduced to a specific character trait and not treated as truly equal - also with regard to their choice of style - and second, the more positive evaluation of stylistically 'feminine' works often influences women who strive for success to fulfil these expectations. This can explain why - especially in the 1950s, and especially when they collaborated with their husbands - women more frequently performed illustrative tasks using delicate lines and soft colours, while their male partners produced design work that was rational and stringent. 

Essay - Feminism and design

Social causes have played a part in preventing women from investing as much time and energy in their design work as men.
- discouraged from publishing
- establishing a reputation 
- contemporary criticism disputes women's capacity for creative 'genius'

Femininity
'Truly feminine combination of naivety and sophistication [...]. Such designs harbour a heartfelt joy in the liberation from all aspects of everyday logic, such as only a grown child can feel.' - Hans Hildebrandt, Die Fra als Künstlerin, 192, pg124

Feminine was seen to be a promotional value. Feminine as a description also limits:
- reduced to a specific character trait and not treated as truly equal
- women who strive for success will be influenced by the expectations and work may become stylistically 'feminine'

1950s 
Collaboration with the husband often resulted in the women taking on the more illustrative role - delicate lines and soft colours 

Ellen Lupton interview
What is feminism? Feminism acknowledges the past inequality of women and doesn't want it to continue into the future. The feminist design looks for graphic strategies that will enable us to listen to people who have not been heard from before. - enabling those voices to be heard 

Riot Grrrl - during the 3rd wave of feminism
Punk scene of the 90s, a movement that used art and music to show their ideas to the world - communicating from one woman to another. DIY philosophy = zines to communicate 
This allowed them to fight back against the mainstream media that wasn't portraying women in a positive/equal light. 

Kristina Ketola Bore
Her work investigates the social structures within and outside of design, in addition to participation and the role intersectionality and feminism can play in the design field. 
'I definitely believe graphic design inhabits possibilities to intervene, change or create...' - Nicole Killian 
This mid-century conviction that designers should be societally responsible emerged concurrently with the idea that design in changing society. 

Pussy Galore typeface by 'Women's Design + Research Unit' for the magazine FUSE.
FUSE by Neville Brody is a postmodern platform for experimental typeface, allowing the breaking of boundaries to portray strong and clear messages. 'This was an opportunity to raise awareness about women working in the profession whilst also critically engaging through an experimental typeface with the language used by, for, and against women.' - Triggs + Cook

Essay - Gender and Power - Connell, R (2006)

Men's power over women in society + why

Hegemonic masculinity: 
'Practice that legitimises men's dominant position in society and justifies the subordination of women, and other marginalised ways of being a man. Conceptually, hegemonic masculinity proposes to explain how and why men maintain dominant social roles over women, and other gender identities, which are perceived as "feminine" in a given society.'

Hegemonic:
Refers to the cultural dynamics by means of which a social group claims, and sustains, a leading and dominant position in a social hierarchy. 

Hegemonic masculinity and emphasised femininity

'there is no femininity that is hegemonic in the sense that the dominant form of masculinity is hegemonic among men'

'compliance with this subordination and orientation to accommodate the interests and needs of men'

'hegemony does not mean total cultural dominance, the obliteration of alternatives. It means ascendency achieved within a balance of forces. Other patterns or groups are subordinate rather than eliminated'

'public face of hegemonic masculinities is not necessarily what powerful men are, but what sustains their power, and what large numbers of men are motivated to support'

'all forms of femininity in this society are constructed in the context of the overall subordination of women to men' 
Design world domination - women designing in the masculine design style

Francesco Maria Morettini
Certain types of behaviour associated with dominance and power create inequalities within and between genders - initially formulated in the1980s, it focuses o the existence of a dominant form of masculinity. 

'It's just a very male industry: gender and work in UK design agencies' - Suzanne Reimer
Looks at ways naturalised gender inequalities in design emerge and are reinforced. 

Gender divisions: 
'Qualities such as creativity and talent are socially constructed characteristics often associated with privileged masculinity' - Parker, 2008, 218

Women experiencing a 'double shift' at work and at home (Perrons, 2003) face greater pressures and stress at work than do men.

Essay - Gender inequality and the role of women in graphic design

(The purple writing is my thoughts on the quotes)

Gender inequality and the role of women in Graphic Design

Interview with Shelia DeBrettville

Interview with Sian Cook & Teal Triggs

https://issuu.com/rachel_irwin/docs/itc_report_rachel_irwin

The graphic design workplace:

During the 1990s there was a surge in the publications debating the lack of flexible working in jobs in general and specifically in the creative industries. Publications such as ‘Communications Arts’ brought the issue to the light;

‘This is not a women’s issue. I this a design issue. The need for flexible work schedules, family leave and feasible childcare, affects both male and female designers but are particularly critical to women who have traditionally been the caregivers.’ (Moira Cullen, 1993, p.27)

In the early stages of the realisation that there was an inequality within the creative industry, editorial design addressed the issue by giving the issue a voice and printed publications could be distributed to a large audience of people.

This feminist revolution and artist groups such as the Guerilla Girls, who created bold graphic posters tackling feminist issues, such as their 1989 image of Ingres’s Odalisque wearing a gorilla mask, with the text: ‘Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes of female.’ (Allen, 2009)

More of a feminist movement highlighting the lack of women in the creative industry, interesting to see how they established an identity and have now well-known editorial pieces.  

The magazine industry has been a successful area for creative women for over 100 years; this success could be attributed to the social nature of women’s magazines, during the World War 2 magazines were at a distribution high as there were one of the few leisure activities aimed solely at women’s interest. This demand led to women taking on top roles in the industry, such a Cipe Pineles who became art director of Glamour magazine in 1942 and Estelle Ellis becoming promotional director of Charm in 1944. Estelle Ellis also took an active role in working with women designers on advertising campaigns, which was a new area for women to be involved in (Lupton, 2000). The demand for magazines dropped in the 1950s as TV became the entertainment of choice.

Look at the outputs back them and see the contrast to the magazines now to see if the design decisions are the same, maybe going back to the traditional design styles to take back the communication power creative women had during this time period.

Grafik magazine recently produced a special report on women in graphic design heroines.

‘My hope is that we won’t need special editions for female designers of today’s generation in tomorrow’s press.’ (Emmi Salonen, Grafik, 2008)

Find an example of a more neutral magazine that maybe doesn’t point out that the article is about a creative role model just because she is a woman.

‘Design is a profession that will ultimately be dominated by women. The numbers are there.’ Paula Scher

The graphic design workplace will adapt with the increased number of bolder and louder women, getting noticed more within the creative industry. Women need to help each other out more by not seeing other women as a threat, supporting women managers and their management style. Editorial design is starting to act upon this by having women designers promoting other strong creative women in a very positive way.