There are certainly more male graphic designers, but the most dramatic gap is between the numbers of men and women in type design. There are probably fewer than fifty women who have created commercial fonts. Women are not scarce in calligraphy and lettering classes, and the number in type design programs at Reading and KABK are all far greater than those who become font makers. No one has adequately explained to me why this is.

There are certainly more male graphic designers…

Stepen, I don’t think that is true. It used to be true, but I doubt that this is still the case.

Maybe men just like to boast more?

> There are certainly more male graphic designers.

> It used to be true, but I doubt that this is still the case.

I absolutely agree, when I did my degree in design, the ratio of women to men was around 3:1! I think things has definitely changed in the past decade or two as with everything else.

I studied graphic design in both the US and in Germany. In both countries, the male:female student ratio was 1:3. This was very recent, though.

Frightening was the teaching staff ratio. In the states, there were female professors, but not as many as there were men. Where I was was studying in Germany, there were no female professors in the design department at all, despite the department having recently hired several new professors, and the student body ratio. (I think that this might have improved though in the year that I’ve been out…).

I can’t speak to the working environments back home in the States anymore. In Germany at the moment, lots of designers are graduationg and not getting jobs for a long time. Many of these graduates start working freelance, or try to found their own studios (out of desperation?). Since there are more female and male gradutes, it seems like there are more women not entering the workforce… but demographics play some role here. The average German design graduate is not 21 but about 28–32, I’d say. Some women opt straight for motherhood once their studies are complete. Some of these women who become mothers will, if the impression from the past decade is to be believed, never enter the design workforce at all, other than in a part-time/freelance capacity.

Still, since there are so many new female designers in comparison with males, there should still be more women getting new jobs than men, even if you factor in possible career and life choices.

Maybe it has something to do with the nature of type design. Its like model railroading - very focusing with a long pedantic breath.

—astype.de—

I think more female discussion participants would help calm down the competitiveness sometimes emerging in the forums.
In the presence of the fair ones, gentlemen should hold their tongues? A chivalrous sentiment, but not now universal.

There are women here using Typophile , but I know that I use Typophile for information - what’s new that I may want to check out, where people see trends, what typeface pairings people like since I am not an expert at these things.

Lately, there have been a couple of posts that have rather discouraged me from posting lest I end up in an argument I had not intended - not posts that says women aren’t welcome or anything, but posts that are openly derisive of people and their situations, questions, issues. (George is so right on this one.)

they have their own forum for alphabetties.

Search is your friend: I had the same question almost 2 years ago now:
Women in type? and the full thread with all moderators’ comments (Read this one)

In the presence of the fair ones, gentlemen should hold their tongues? A chivalrous sentiment, but not now universal.

My intention is not to protect anyone, Lady or Gentleman, from harsh discussions. I have worked in both all-men and all-women environments, and I must say, neither is an advantage. Reading some of the forums/threads on Typophile, I recognise the “male” patterns. These discussions evolve in a direction of who’s right and who’s wrong, and that’s not very interesting, if you ask me.

Saying this, I find most discussions here very interesting. And I can not point to specific threads, this is just a general notion.

quote - These discussions evolve in a direction of who’s right and who’s wrong, and that’s not very interesting, if you ask me.
Saying this, I find most discussions here very interesting.

You can’t have it both ways alex, to quote an old overused saying. :)

Thought comes from all directions…

peace

at my school there are 4 girls to every guy in the graphic design classes, so even if it’s more males in the business now, that certainly should change soon.

> openly derisive

So women prefer being covertly derisive? :-)

—

In my type design class, 5 out of 7 students are women. And I actually think that’s typical of graphic design as a whole these days. On the other hand, while the women seem to go on to become professional graphic designers, they don’t do the same with type design. My explanation is that women have more sense.

hhp

Yes, type design is such a lucrative profession—it even pays less than being a school teacher. :-)

I do think most young people going into design these days are women. Perhaps the next generation will bring more women to type design.

ChrisL

help calm down the competitiveness

Alex, what would you do if most times you got in a discussion on Typophile someone joined in and started dissing your work or where you lived?

Maybe it has something to do with the perceived technical nature of type design? I double-majored as an undergraduate, getting degrees in both English Lit and Physics simultaneously (though I work as a designer these days). My English classes were 70% female, while my Physics classes were 70% male (at a university that was circa 60% female overall). I had a chance to observe the stereotypes that members of each discipline held for the other. Male physicists often characterized literary criticism as a wishy-washy field, lacking any real rigor or organization. But the lit girls thought physics was all about crunching numbers and complicated math, stuff that was basically meaningless to their lives. They assumed physics was inaccessible, even though they’d never really been exposed to it. When a field seems innately technical, it generally appeals better to men; when it seems organic or humanistic, it generally attracts more women. At least, that’s what I’ve observed.

All attempts at broad brushstrokes will ultimately be proven futile…

Unless you’re a calligrapher or painter. :)

peace

> what would you do if ...

Throw primadonna hissy-fits?
“Respect me, and using only my concept of respect,
or I’ll cut some ears off... starting with mine!”

Nick, it’s not you, it’s me: when I see somebody
say something too wrong, I have to counter it.
Well, maybe it’s partly you as well, since you
exhibit the lion’s share of what [I think] is wrong.

Now, if you need to keep pushing this thead in the
direction of macho-wars (which I assure you is mostly
one-sided) and reply to this (probably with something
passive-aggressively caustic) go ahead, and I’ll gladly
let you have the last word (as I’ve been doing often).
Or maybe you’ll allow yourself to look better by not
doing so. Your own behaviour is really only up to you.

hhp

Alex, what would you do...

I hope I wouldn’t start dissing their work or where they lived.

I studied Graphic Design in the UK and (unfortunately for me)it had a big emphasis on advertising and I tell you, it’s a male world and I’m talking about the worst kind: the mysogenous, power thirsty patronising tosser which looks at you with contempt everytime you open your mouth... I think editorial design environments are usually more balanced. In my short experience at typophile I find 90% of the discussions fine and helpful ....the discussion I posted about gays show that some still have a little problem with diversity...but nothing very upsetting really.

patronising tosser
mysogenous, from musos + genein = ’filth-producing’.

well i’m here, but i’m not a type designer so i guess that doesn’t help... i like type a whole lot though!!! anyway, isn’t it a bit of a disservice to the women doing great work in graphic deisgn and type design to complain that there aren’t any women around?

My explanation is that women have more sense.

This rings of truth.

>anyway, isn’t it a bit of a disservice to the women doing great work in graphic deisgn and type design to complain that there aren’t any women around?

I’m not complaining that there aren’t any woman around, I know there are. I was just wondering if they are underrepresented in this forum. If so, it could mean that a disproportionate amount of female graphic/type designers are excluded from the networking going on this website.

> isn’t it a bit of a disservice to the women doing great work
> in graphic deisgn and type design to complain that there
> aren’t any women around?

Maybe he was complaining that there aren’t
enough around. But really, is there ever? :-)

hhp

You’re absolutely right: something should be done. If there’s one thing in the world that I shall tolerate no longer, it’s seeing woman after disproportionate woman being excluded from Typophile.

I dunno, type designer women seem generally well-proportioned to me.

hhp

female type designers seem to be in short supply though, yes.. honestly, i can only name two prolific female type designers off the back of my hand and that’s Zuzana Licko and Carol Twombly (of Trajan fame).

ok, maybe disproportionate was the wrong word. Come on, it’s not that easy being norwegian! I mean, all we get to eat is whale and reindeer. Maybe “off-balance” is the word I was looking for?

> “off-balance”

Well, considering the crushing majority of them avoid type design
like the plague, that might in fact be an accurate description. ;-)

BTW, you know what I’ve been dying to have forever?
Dolphin. Where can a guy get a filet of one?

hhp

Yes, where are the women? Nobody wants me! Gah!

I mean, all we get to eat is whale and reindeer.

I wish I had a catch-all excuse that good.

ugh...disgusting.

BTW, you know what I’ve been dying to have forever? Dolphin. Where can a guy get a filet of one?

I wouldn’t be surprised to find it in a sushi bar being called something else.

It’s a good thing they don’t like cold water or you could probably find it in Norway.
; )

I always try to buy my canned tuna with dolphin. ;-)

Gents hold onto your seats, the sea of female designers will spill fourth like lemmings in about 2 years and rest assured some of them will become type designers . . .

How am I so confident? It’s simple . . . Digital Scrapbooking . . .

That’s secret code for Photoshop Art Director and I predict as the trend grows into a billion dollar industry like it’s paper and scissors counterpart the fallout of a relaxing hobby for the female scrappin’ set will become a sea of very capable female Phoshop designers who will realize there is very little difference between designing cute album pages of Rover the pooch and a website or brochure for a fortune 500 company . . .

Nobody sees this and it’s sure to hit the design world over the head . . .

Mark this post! You read it here first!

Stuart :D

Mark this post! You read it here first!

Did you come up with that? That is very astute. I believe it,
and will remember...
: )

self censored

> Get yourself a dictionary

Between a dictionary and a sense of humor I’ll the latter any day...

hhp

Lorenza, I was imitating the patronising tosser of your post: I was teasing you. If the tosser dislikes you for your gender alone, he is a misogynist.

Thanx, not everyone has access to your priviledged education and maybe English is not my mother language and hrant, what do you have to do with that anyway? Bloody hell, what a bunch of pedantic arses you are! Hrant, serious: you talk a lot for someone that doesn’t have ANYTHING to say. You are just there to post silly little meaningless comments on absolutely anything, maybe you don’t have much work to do? career not going well? get a life, mate!

> maybe English is not my mother language

It was my fourth.

—

Lorenza, come on, please take it easy.

hhp

Look: I’m working on only 5 projects and I don’t have time to breathe, I check Typophile only every couple of days and usually for a good reason. I love these forums but it pisses me off that in order to find a useful comment I have to waste my precious time going through useless observations. I strongly recommend you (and Dennis if he’s reading this) keep your contributions to a minimum in terms of quantity and try to raise the quality of your observations.
Back to work, now?

The pedantry you encounter, Lorenza, is actually a response to your thinking style: the listener, though he cannot openly insult you, must nonetheless recoil at it.

Lorenza: what do you have to do with that anyway?
George: the listener ... must nonetheless recoil

Hmm, we might be getting somewhere.
Maybe women don’t like chauvinists?
Hrant is the #1 poster and says what he likes about anything, regardless of people’s sensitivities. George, don’t be swayed by the dark side.

I have my own idea of the dark side/light side divide, so I’ll be alright Nick.

I strongly recommend you (and Dennis if he’s reading this) keep your contributions to a minimum in terms of quantity and try to raise the quality of your observations.

All my observations use only the freshest ingredients, and come with a money-back guarantee. A sense of humor is required for some of the esoteric allusions. I admit surprise that the brilliance of my contributions are not universally acknowledged, but I try not to let that dampen my spirits.
: )

> I have to waste my precious time

My time is more precious than yours.

> Maybe women don’t like chauvinists?

Except I generally have no problem with women on these boards.
My main problem has always been with a very narrow demographic:
the middle-aged Anglo male. Think objectively why that’s the case.

BTW, feel free to deliver warnings about the Dark Side, but I in
turn feel no need to counter that, since I’m confident that nobody
never ever wants to go the Whiny Side. BTW, women hate that.

hhp

I love these forums but it pisses me off that in order to find a useful comment I have to waste my precious time going through useless observations.

Yeah ... But how else would you get the bliss of discovering something?

Except I generally have no problem with women on these boards.

But they might have a problem with guys who say stuff like “type designer women seem generally well-proportioned to me”. Surely there is a sensitivity training course you could take in LA?

such a fascinating thread....I go to undergrad design school and this is a constant topic of discussion as the ration of women to men is often 15-17:1 as a single class may often have just one male in it, some none at all. In any case, that seems to be the general rule about design schools as of late.

I don’t really know what that means—perhaps the scales will swing drastically within the next decade—perhaps not. At the same time, what does it matter?

I find that gender is much more of a broad gradient than it is a black and white definition. Anyway, it’s all about categorization of body shapes and generalizations that don’t really have anything to do with those letters that we fiddle with all day....right

except boys have cooties. hee.

> they might have a problem with

As usual, you are entirely too eager to feel offense, to the extent of doing so by proxy. Let the women complain if they really want to - they don’t need you as a spokesman. Stop projecting perceived offense onto yourself. Really Nick, am I not giving you enough of your fill directly?

hhp

Canadian vs LAlien - the death match continues…

When I was in Vancouver there were two articles on the front page of the paper on why you shouldn’t speed.

peace

>>

hrant: Like you’re going to apologize and stop pontificating if someone (man or woman) complains!
And why are YOU (hrant)talking on women’s behalf? I might need Nick as a spokesman, not because I need a man (or anyone)to defend me but because he seems to be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy more diplomatic than you with your “divine interventions” and unrequested “pearls of wisdom”.
Alex: Probably women don’t hang around a lot here because they are usually more sensitive to issues of discrimination: racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, classism etc. and people that pontificate too much in general.

> Like you’re going to apologize

In fact I apologize about 50 times more than Nick (and I don’t make nearly as many as 50 times more mistakes). You’ve only been here 6 weeks, and you think you’ve figured everything out about everybody, eh? It’s OK, I will tolerate your naive arrogance.

> he seems to be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy more diplomatic

He is. He’s from your island. Both geographically and psychologically.

Typophile is not the UN - it is a place to learn,
and that’s best done with tolerance (but not the
kind you stomp your feet about) and a spine.

hhp

Sibylle Hagmann (Cholla, etc.) wrote an article last year, “Non-existent design: women and the creation of type”

You’ll need a subscription to Visual Communication Online to read it.

http://vcj.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/4/2/186?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RE...

whoaaaaaaa lady ! Are you calling me jellyfish!? Umph!
I was waiting for you to throw on my face the number of weeks I’ve been around...actually it took you a long time! Given how territorial you are, it was all very predictable. Which is why it took me only few weeks to figure out about you. You are such a darling simple transparent person that I almost feel like hug you. BTW...I am not originally from the “island” (but I luv it!) and we don’t need to be the UN but it would be nice to consider that people here come from all sort of countries, minority groups, races, gender, sexuality etc. and a bit of love and affection and good manners would be nice. It would improve a lot the learning environment ;)
Shall we now move on and talk about the issues that really matter, namely “equality at Typophile” if I well remember...or you might as well be “hranting” alone.

peace out homeboy, we are all in the same boat (looking like the Titanic at least in this forum...)

PS: what have the Brits done to you that you are still holding a grudge? ;) You’ll see everything will be fine! Hugz

I remember my tutor at university saying ( brilliant nice woman) saying that you shouldn’t write your gender and your date of birth on your CV, cause nobody needs to know that. If she said that probably she knew (2 decades in the profession)what a male world is Graphic Design. She said that. Not me. But I agree with the CV thing.It’s nobody’s business if you are a woman, a man. Of course usually you can tell the gender by the name...
Damn... I don’t have a subscription to Visual Communication.

While I think that everything matters (especially age, although not absolutely). It’s not a matter of ignoring aspects of reality, it’s a matter of treating people (including third parties who will be affected by a particular hiring decision for example) fairly. That said, it’s understandable to try to bypass unfair imbalances in the system - as long as we admit it, and not hide behind a veil of relativism.

hhp

Yo babe! Glad you’re back in shape.
I don’t agree with the age thing. Age in graphic design means experience and good solid education. I see lots of kids with talent nowadays that are just worried about what’s trendy now and are just producing ephemerous work (oh jeeesss...where are you george? I don’t know how to spell ephemerous in English...) stuff you look at and forget about it after 5 secs. I don’t believe it’s absolutely necessary to know how to use the latest technology if you are creative enough. I mean, obviously if you can’t cope with the technology developments, you are missing a lot of things...type design for example?

> Glad you’re back in shape.

I assimilate you.
If you stick around long enough, I’m confident you will get it.

> I don’t agree with the age thing. Age in graphic
> design means experience and good solid education.

?
Make up your mind!

BTW, it’s funny you thought I meant that young = good.
In fact I meant no such thing - if anything I meant the
opposite. Think about why that happened; such intro-
spection is a key to growth.

hhp

> Age in graphic design means experience and good solid education.

Wow... thanks for the off-handed compliment.
But age can produce wine, vinegar and very stinky cheese!

As for women in type design, the ones you learn about are the ones that outclassed many of the males. The same holds true for art. Very few males are still willing to admit that Mary Cassatt was a “better” painter than most of the Impressionists, and that Georgia O’Keefe was in a class by herself.

—————————————————————————————————
Yes, I’m old, but I’m experienced and have a solid education! ;-)

I know a bunch of people…

peace

Does it even matter how many women do what? Seriously, would it change the way you use type? Besides, everyone knows women can’t do hard stuff like type design.

“except boys have cooties”

LOL, now you sound like my daughter when she was younger. She eventually got over it :-)

ChrisL

“except boys have cooties”

LOL, now you sound like my daughter when she was younger. She eventually got over it :-)

Back in the ’50s the only (times have changed) Mexican girl in our So. Cal. school was Nadine. If she drank out of a certain faucet, no one else could use that faucet for the rest of the day, or they got the cooties too. This type of behavior went on for the entire year. I wish I could see that she wasn’t emotionally scarred for life.

I was avoiding joining in this thread, but I think I want to know, what are cooties?
Tim
btw Lore the word you are looking for, I think, is ephemeral and the point you make about it is sadly true.

Dennis,
The ethnic reference in your anecdote is in poor taste and is not needed to tell the story. You might want to remove it and avoid offending people.

ChrisL

Dennis,
The ethnic reference in your anecdote is in poor taste and is not needed to tell the story. You might want to remove it and avoid offending people.,

Please tell me you are kidding? That is what puts it in context. Simply for being Mexican we emotionally tortured a girl. I only spoke out about it because I had just been wondering about her Sat. But I feel bad about it. I am married to a Mexican citizen.

I won’t jump to conclusions about you, but a big problem in today’s society is how quickly so many people get offended. Unless someone is urinating on some Christian icon, of course. Then it is free speech.

I bare my soul, and someone nit-picks. This week isn’t starting out good. I’ll hope things get better at the office.

Ephemeral! Of course...how embarrassing, I’m mixing the languages you see (or it’s the age) thanx! Now I’d love to know what a cootie is...
I realised my comment about age equal experience/solid education wasn’t very fortunate the moment I wrote it..I knew nobody would let me get away with it! Anyway, I was trying to avoid this thread too because it’s all very vague (starting from me...). It would be best to gather statistics and figures and then try to come to some conclusion. Maybe Typophile can provide that?

A “Cootie” is something invented by young children in elementary schools years ago. It is some sort of an evil ficticious bug creature that can infest you. Children can be cruel so at times, they would hurl the biggest insult that they could muster at someone they disliked or were jealous of. That remark was “You have Cooties”!. At which point a chorus of “Ehhuuuuuu!!!” would chime in by the rest of the 3rd graders in earshot.
Since at that age boys and girls are “enemies” (until puberty strikes), the Cooties insult was often blasted at members of the opposite sex.

ChrisL

Origin:

Pronunciation: (kOO’tē), [key]
—n. Informal.
a louse, esp. one affecting humans, as the body louse, head louse, or pubic louse. Also,cooty

Indiscrimitely applied by third-graders. As an aside, (I hope no one is offended), about that age, I once called a white boy the “n” word. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was “bad”. I sure the meeting we had with the boy’s parents that night would be comical if it could have been video-taped.

Yes, “So-and-so has Cooties!” was one of the earliest insults you could fling recalling early school years from the fifties.

I also remember the board game, shown above dated 1949, so it must have been used as an expression many years before that.

Current version of Cootie Game by Milton Bradley still available.

Norbert,
That game always bugged me :-)

ChrisL

PS: Carol says hello!

> PS: Carol says hello!

Glad you had a great time at TDC, thanks for your great summary on FontTech Weekend.

yes.. honestly, i can only name two prolific female type designers off the back of my hand and that’s Zuzana Licko and Carol Twombly (of Trajan fame).

Only two?

Freda Sack, Fiona Ross, Chris Holmes, Diane Collier, Jill Bell, Veronica Elsner, Holly Goldsmith, Teri Kahan, Lennea Lundquist, Jean Evans, Yvonne Diedrich...

yes.. honestly, i can only name two prolific female type designers off the back of my hand and that’s Zuzana Licko and Carol Twombly (of Trajan fame).

Soon to join the ranks: Rebecca Aliccari? (At what point is “prolific” reached?)

Chris, et al
Thanks for the definition – children can be beasts can’t they?

Lore,
No need to apologise, wish I could mix languages with the same facility.

Tim