To celebrate International Women's Day (March 8th 2011), I thought I'd dig up a little article I wrote some time ago about gender differentiation in design ... enjoy. MC
Initially one would think that there is most definitely no discernible difference between male and female design.
For instance you can’t pick up a magazine, flick to a page layout and say confidently “That was most certainly done by a female.”
Or can you?
After studying graphic design at University in a studio environment that has a combination of both male and female designers, one could say quite confidently that males and females do have a differing style of taste, aesthetically speaking when it comes to the product of their design work. However there is a fine line between picking up gender elements in a piece, and picking up varying styles from one person to the next.
Simply knowing a persons style from working closely with them for three years can easily be confused with determining gender elements in their work.
However being in the graphic design industry graphic designers must learn that yes they are an artist ...
BUT working in graphic design means that the product of their creativity at the end of the day must be client orientated. For instance a female designer may be required to put together a campaign for a male orientated company like Hard Yakka for example, the outcome of this campaign would then be male orientated, appealing to the target audience. To look at the campaign one would say that it had to have been done by a male. This is where gender in graphic design gets confusing.
If graphic designers were to have total artistic freedom in their design work then yes elements of gender would show up as the work would be done on a personal level, but working in a client based industry changes a graphic designers work to suit the needs of a different person, therefore the outcome of the work would be very hard to be judged as either male or female.
Art and aesthetic taste are powerful framers of self-image, social identity and public values[1].
Breaking down that sentence if art and aesthetics are in fact powerful framers of self-image and social identity then work (art or design) done on a personal level would most definitely have stand out gender traits.
Comparing Male and Female Design
A survey was conducted to members of the general public (not those who study in the field of art of design) on two pieces of graphic design work, one piece taken from a female illustrator named Fafi who’s work appears in Curvy Magazine, Curvy Magazine is a Women’s graphic design and illustration magazine published annually by Yen Magazine and released at the Semi Permanent Design Conference held in Sydney annually every July. Curvy Magazine celebrates women in design and the beauty of design work and illustration created by women, the magazine screams woman and clearly every piece in the magazine was created by a women, even the general non graphic design public can tell this.
The other piece was taken from POL Oxygen magazine an architecture, industrial and product design magazine.
This in contrast to Curvy is dark in appearance, very structured, grid like, geometrical feeling that seems to have been created by a male designer. After emailing POL Oxygen to confirm that their designer was in fact a male, Editor Jan Mackey replied:
Hello Morgan
What an odd proposition that male and female graphic designers would have their gender as a determining factor in their design!
Our designer is male.
Best wishes,
Jan Mackey
Editor, POL Oxygen magazine
The results were as follows:
These two design pieces give a clear indication that there is a difference in aesthetics when it comes to the product of a female designer compared to a male designer.
Feminism In Art and design
It must be noted that there is an extremely big difference between art and design created by a female and art and design created by a feminist. For example female graphic design, such as that seen in Curvy magazine is done by females, but not of a feminist nature.
“Feminism is the conviction that gender has been, and continues to be a fundamental category for the organization of culture, moreover the pattern of that organization usually favours men not women.”[1]
Feminist approaches to art (and graphic design) have been, and still are extremely influential[2] so what role does feminism play in the formation and application of ideas about artworks, creativity and aesthetic value?
Feminist work takes on the approach that images, representations and crafted expression of ideas are important not only for their beauty, virtuosity or intrinsic value but also because they are indicators of social position and power.[3]
Wherever there is power, there are disparities in the ways that it is employed ...
and art is an enterprise where sex and sexuality, gender and social position and cultural authority all have a formidable role.[4]
There is a major difference between the work of a female artist or graphic designer and a feminist artist or designer. While a female artist or designers work may contain “typical” female gender traits, like the subconscious use of colour and shape and various other design elements. Feminist art and design is more of a voice or an opinion of a belief, expressed creatively.
Schopenhauer’s remark that 'women are incapable of important artistic creativity' would have had feminist artists and designers across the work absolutely furious!
MC.
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