Noel Douglas

Noel Douglas is a designer and lecturer; a lot of his work has some brilliant politically sharp messages slicing through with a dash of satire to boot. My personal favourite being a poster of the ever-wonderful Mr Brown, there are also a few mocking Brown’s predecessor hanging about on: http://www.noeldouglas.net/, definitely worth a visit.

Noel is also organising a movement called Occupy Design born out of the tents of St Pauls last year, it has been thriving ever since. I definitely recommend giving this a visit: http://occupydesign.org.uk/ 

I’m a firm believer of ‘designing for the revolution’ and all that jazz. In an industry which is seemingly built upon selling dog food to the poor *nods towards the First Things First Manifesto* it’s time we see that with great power and over use of corporate Helvetica comes great responsibility and kerning. 

I asked Noel the same question I’ve been asking all my interviewees, ‘where are all the women?’ For some time there has been a little voice in my head saying: 'Some of them have kids, they set up a family and they’re too busy doing the school run to fix that baseline grid anymore’ although, it might be true for some, but is it necessarily true for the majority?

After some serious thought I realised I was too focused on trying to find a reason, any reason, expect the most apparent one, I was avoiding the obvious. Noel pointed out, brilliantly so might I add, that “saying women are affected because of kids, is not to be sexist and to presume women look after kids and men don't: it's acknowledging that in our sexist societies things are structured to make it as difficult as possible for women to escape these pressures.” This would go fittingly in the chapter of my dissertation entitled: Screw You Society You Oppressive Bastards.

According to my research so far and general chats with strangers, it seems that society has a lot to answer for. Society and culture: studio culture to be more precise. In the majority of the studios I’ve worked at, men have outnumbered women, that’s just an observation not an accusation (I promise). The women in those studios were fantastic and ‘gave as good as they got’.  Noel pointed out how there’s “very much a lads culture in a lot of graphic design which again doesn't allow for quieter or less confident/loud voices which also adversely affects women” Agreed, this ‘lads culture’ becomes more apparent in the really competitive work environments, we’re talking about those in top 5% of their profession.

But there’s also the working culture. Every designer here knows those 3am panic deadlines. Those endless cups of coffee. The technical-end-of-workdays at 5.30pm, which actually end somewhere closer to 9:30pm. Constant checking emails in case that arsehole from the printers has gotten back to you with a quote. Having lunch over a keyboard. Laptops also becoming multipurpose pillows. Re-touching that logo for the 7^th time halfway through dinner despite the fact you’ve told your client you were only going to do the one revision. This culture, in the words of Noel, “mitigates against people when they have children or caring responsibilities. These cultures are bad and stop women from being able to work and develop careers, the 'design industry' is very unprofessional in this sense (and the same goes for internship culture) and that is, in part, because it is made up of smallish studios dominated by strong characters; who are usually men.”

Oh and don’t even get me started on the pay gap. Having a uterus has become even harder under this coalition. Noel also commented on how the “lack of childcare, lack of flexible working patterns, and the fact that in most relationships the man will still be paid more (often for the same work) mean many people have no choice, especially financially, but to break the woman's career not the man’s”. Now multiply that by the cuts and these ‘austerity measures’ we’ve had cooking up as of late and you’ve got yourself a recipe for some lightly salted patriarchy poached with a side of braised capitalism (celeriac puree is optional).

Before I head off, the above metaphor has left me rather quite peckish, I think this ponder-rant leads me nicely onto the next. It’s not just women. Bad studio culture? How about stay-at-home dads affected by it? Lads culture? Needing to be shouty to get anywhere? Can we still realistically pursue a career in design with today's economic climate? A lot of the above mentioned isn’t just affecting women. There’s a whole chunk of minorities who are being under represented in design industries because of this. Where are the women? I think it should be 'Where is everybody?'. 

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Thank you to Noel Douglas for answering all my questions and also all his fantastic work with Occupy Design (another shameless plug: http://occupydesign.org.uk/) 

Sarah Maple

I carried out a little interview with Sarah Maple and she threw back some really interesting responses. Here’s a round up:

Sarah Maple is an artist, not a designer, but I feel that this idea can extend to all creative disciplines. (Also I’m quite a fan of Maple, so any excuse to knock on her inbox, I’ll take it.) Maple’s work is fantastically feminist, what I really love about it, is how she boldly takes on taboo. You just have to take one look at ‘Menstruate with pride’ to see how she’s sticking a finger up to, by which I mean intellectually challenging and visually debating, preconceived notions of women’s roles within society. Screw you tampax, you oppressive bastards, or something to that effect. 

If you fancy drooling over her work too, take a look at: www.sarahmaple.com, also I picked up this print about 5mins ago on a whim: http://bit.ly/TMDz12 considering sticking this to the front door, because doormats are sooo 2011.

Now onto the serious stuff:

Where does this gender divide begin, I personally suspect it starts in education. Maple noticed by her third year in Uni men were treated differently to women, she says “I found that the men were immediately taken more seriously and the girls got a lot more of a harder time in crits. It was as if the guys had automatic respect for their ideas and the women had to fight harder for any recognition at the same level”  

I completely agree, I’m fortunate enough not to experience this in my educational institution, but in a broader sense it bugs me that I have to work twenty times harder than my male counterparts. Not because I dislike hard work (I love hard work), but because my hard work would never be valued in the same way. Arguably if you’re a heterosexual white guy with a middle class background, then things tend to be in your favour most of the time. They could produce the same work and be just as competent as me but are considerably more likely to succeed due to the way society is set up.

At this point a few of you might say  ‘Whoa, back up now Soof, take a chill pill that’s just you seeing the world like some sort of feminist Matrix’ I wish it was, I really do. Maple makes a brilliant point about when she went to a talk at the Tate  “I saw the statistics in the differences in the number of shows given to women and the number given to men. On the majority of big galleries it is at least 75% male” What’s more is when you really start getting all heavy with the numbers this imbalance is happening across the board from art, to design to architecture.

It’s not just a few of us kicking up a fuss over nothing. Women are seemingly hidden from mainstream art and design. Yes, yes, there are a few names but why only a ‘few’? Surely the world is 50/50 (well technically 48/52: men/women) gender wise, why isn't that reflected everywhere, naturally? Where are all the women?

You could argue actually forget this whole 50/50 split thing, there aren’tenough women going into design education which in turn means there are probably less female designers out there to get the numbers you’re after. Good point, well made, *falls to knees with hands in the air in a dramatic fashion* but WHY?!

As mentioned before its seems harder for us to get into and also it might be because there aren’t enough role models and if there are, they’re little known, so we assume there aren’t any. Maple agrees: “One of the most inspiring quotes I heard from a feminist was 'you can't be what you can't see.' And i think it is as simple as this, like the way advertising works. You emulate what is around you. I think if women do not see other women living successfully as designers subconsciously they will choose another path.” The woman is a god-damn poet, I tell you!

So far this has just been me throwing around ideas and questions at strangers. I still don’t have a definite answer and I’m reluctant to pin this down to one thing. Everything here is just ponderings and should in no way be considered as an answer or fact. I suppose this is just a big exercise in pondering and pondering I am. (Lovely word: pondering)

I’d like to end this ponder-rant (coining this term for everyday use) with something said by Maple which makes me think ‘all is not lost’: “We need to get more female creatives out there and cause a viral affect to inspire more women.” To which I say: Let’s go Fenton on this shit. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GRSbr0EYYU)

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Thank you to Sarah Maple for taking her time to respond to all my questions and hopefully for not suing me for stealing the above picture from her site.