R.I. graphic design community levels the playing field for women
The average American adult is exposed to over 3,000 advertisements every day: when they turn on the TV, walk down the cereal aisle, scroll through Facebook or now even Instagram. A closer look into the industry shows that most of the time men have the final...
The average American adult is exposed to over 3,000 advertisements every day: when they turn on the TV, walk down the cereal aisle, scroll through Facebook or now even Instagram.
A closer look into the industry shows that most of the time men have the final say on what enters our visual landscape. Today, only 12 percent of creative executives in the advertising industry are women. Four years ago, female executives made up only three percent of the industry leadership.
Over this past March, the Rhode Island chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (known as AIGA) launched an event series called “KnowHER Design Talks,” which strives to counteract sexist legacies in the design and advertising industries.
“You see a lot of women who are designers at the entry-level area, and once you get higher up into management systems and management positions, that’s when it starts to be very male-heavy.”
This is Dana Haddad, who co-heads AIGA Rhode Island, and was one of the organizers of the KnowHER series.
KnowHER — as in ‘get to know her’ — celebrates a few of the female designers impacting the industry, who do not get as much recognition as their male counterparts. As part of the event, big-name designers like Debbie Millman and Ellen Lupton, spoke about their experiences that led them to design, and the creative processes that drive their work. In addition to these lectures, KnowHER included a gallery titled ‘SeeHerWork,’ which showcased the designs of both emerging and established female artists side by side.
By giving female designers more visibility, and starting a conversation around gender disparities within the field, KnowHER aimed to dissolve the gender barrier that affects so many women in the industry.
This barrier is very real for Kristin DiVona, another AIGA Rhode Island administrator and an organizer of KnowHER. Working in the design industry for 20 or so years, Kristin has confronted professional barriers that didn’t impact her male coworkers. Partly as a result, Kristin began her own company.
“I have definitely felt pushback in the workspace by males. I now work for myself which is great. I’ve worked for some ad agencies and in terms of my level, I’ve always made it to associate art director but never quite made it to art director or creative director and there have definitely been times when I’ve been told, I think we need a male in this meeting and we need a stronger voice for this client,” she said.
Kristin’s experience is unfortunately fairly common: female designers are much less likely to be found in top professional positions, or any professional positions at all for that matter. Instead, they’re found in the classroom. A 2010 survey conducted by the Design Council — a UK-based nonprofit — found that 70 percent of design students are female, yet only 40 percent of professionals.
This school-to-industry gender disparity translates to a troublesome classroom dynamic: majority-female students end up learning about majority-male professionals.
Melanie Scanlan is a graphic design student at UMass Dartmouth, and can’t find any prominent female designers in her curriculum.
“In our history of design class, all of the designers that are prominent designers are all male — all the type designers, every kind of designer, the main one is a male designer,” she said.
Dana also saw that the graphic design teachers she knows have a hard time finding literature about female designers to share with their students. However, some of the most familiar logos and designs are made by women. The Nike logo and the layout of the computer game Solitaire are both designed by women, Carolyn Davidson and Susan Kare.
One of the most influential styles of typography — called “Swiss Style” — was brought to United States by an American female designer, Jacqueline Casey. In the 1950s, Casey began to adopt the asymmetric layout and Sans-Serif font of the Swiss Style in her own work. And this influenced her American colleagues. However, this contribution is often not credited to Casey. Instead, male designer Rudolph de Harak is heralded as the liaison between American and Swiss design. This is also the case for Margaret Calvert. She and her partner Jock Kinnier are responsible for designing British road and railway signs. Until very recently, Calvert has had little mention in history, and was referred to as Kinneir’s assistant, rather than colleague.
The invisibility of female designers in mainstream history creates the illusion that there are few accomplished women in the industry to look up to.
Juliette Cezzar, a design professor at Parsons in New York City who participated in KnowHER, says the integration of technology in design has even further discouraged women from pursuing a career in the industry. She says some of her students are intimidated by coding, and digital media, especially since tech skills are often associated with men.
“I routinely see students take themselves out of the game due to what they see as a mismatch with their identity. So they’re like ‘I don’t really like math, I’m not really into tech’ and then once that involves a space with an all-male workplace, they’re like ‘no way’…that I think is the core problem.”
Juliette says design can also be a difficult career for women in particular because it’s, in her words, “a huge high-risk venture.” Like many creative fields, there isn’t one clear path that leads to a job in design. And making it in the industry requires putting yourself out there — something that women have been socialized not to do.
“Men are praised for going to the Antarctic, and occasionally you have the Amelia Earharts of the world, but they’re celebrated for being the exception,” she said. “Girls are given a lot of messages they should not be so risky in terms of their decision making. Girls are told not to be risky in even who they date. There are so many messages telling them to be conservative. Even if you think about the fact that 55 percent of college students are women. Why is that? It’s not because women love learning more than men do. It’s because women find college to be a stable thing to do.”
Possibly the most troubling part is that there is validity to telling women and girls not to take risks. The Harvard Business Review published a report in 2013 showing how men are able to take more risks when it comes to their careers. This is because studies show that employers are more willing to invest in men, who are perceived as stronger and more capable than women.
“If you’re a white dude, then you probably can quit school. It will be fine especially if you’re connected into a high-end group of people. If you’re a woman or a person of color, and you decide to quit school, and go do something else, good luck to you. In 10 years, 20 years, everybody will question if you’re credentialed enough to do what you’re doing.”
Another psychological disparity between men and women is confidence. Repeated studies have revealed that women lack the kind of self-confidence that carries men professionally and thus financially.
Because of this confidence gap, women not only tend to hesitate when asking for a raise or promotion, but also don’t see themselves as qualified to showcase their work or speak on a panel.
Women constitute only 5-10 percent of panelists at today’s major design conferences, like TypoBerlin and global conventions for Association Typographique Internationale.
Kristin questioned this alarming paucity: “There are conferences all over the world, all different kinds: there’s offset London, there are AIGA conferences. The majority of speakers tend to be male. So, we’re not sure: is it that females don’t want to get up in front of people and present? Are they not being asked?”
Creators of KnowHER hoped to counteract this trend by giving accomplished female artists the opportunity to speak. .
“Personally, the reason I really like lectures, is because you get to hear the person talk about their work, as opposed to just going on their portfolio site and seeing what they do. And that’s what’s most meaningful, is talking about the ideas behind the final piece, or talking about their thought process. It’s so much more personal and I think that is the benefit of — the idea of the conference name is getting to know this person and not just Googling the person,” Dana said. “It’s really just putting forth these examples of women doing amazing work that students can look up to, designers can look up to, both male and female.”
KnowHER wanted to emphasize the individuality of each of its participants, and show that women have a wide range of experiences, design styles, and creative processes.
Rashelle is co-president of AIGA Rhode Island and worked on the design for KnowHER’s branding, which features crisp white and yellow text against a teal background.
“We didn’t over-brand it; we used a clean typeface, and we didn’t use any illustrations or any photography because there are so many different styles that each of these women have, that we didn’t want to say: come learn about this specific part of design because each of them are unique so we kept it pretty broad,” Rashelle said.
The simplicity of the design was also a way to ensure gender neutrality. Jay Biethan, who designed KnowHER’s logo with Rashelle, was aware of the social implications of the event’s design:
“We wanted to keep it gender neutral colors, obviously if we went with blue or pink, it would be a little too specific to what would be gender-oriented colors,” he said.
Organizers say they hope to continue the conference. Though this year’s conference didn’t center on the experiences of women of color, queer, transgender, and gender nonconforming graphic designers, Rashelle says KnowHer may expand in the future to address these identities.
Rashelle shared: “I see it going a lot of different ways. When we initially sat down and really narrowed down the name in particular, we saw it just being a knowledge-based idea that could really inform anyone about anything. Who knows? Next year it could be KnowHIM, KnowTHEM.”
Credit: Sienna Giraldi. A sticker advertises KnowHER on Thayer Street.
Credit: Sienna Giralidi. Design-duo Eniko Deri and Nora Demeczky present their work at the Providence Public Library.
Credit: Sienna Giraldi. Caitlyn Sit’s “Play” featured among other work at the ‘SeeHerWork’ Gallery in RISD Graphic Design Commons.
Credit: Sienna Giraldi. ‘She’s the Tits’ and ‘KnowHER Design Talks’ pencils from the conference with a pamphlet.