Haus proud: The women of Bauhaus

'When the Bauhaus art school opened in 1919, more women applied than men – so why have we never heard of them?'

Article by Jonathan Glancey for The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/nov/07/the-women-of-bauhaus

TIPOGRAFÍA MÉXICO — The Future is Female

TMX es la primer conferencia internacional en México, dedicada a la Tipografia, Diseño, y Nuevas Tecnologias. El tema de este año es: THE FUTURE IS FEMALE

TMX is the first international conference in México dedicated to typography, design and new technologies, and the first big typography conference wholly dedicated to female designers!





TMX Tipografía México: es la primer Conferencia Internacional en México dedicada a la Tipografía, Lettering, Diseño, y Tecnología.

En esta edición “The Future is Female” descibrirán el potencial del movimiento tipográfico liderado por mujeres mexicanas con proyección Internacional.

Nuevos talentos Mexicanos haciendo Tipografía. Líderes internacionales compartiendo y educando a nuestra comunidad.

SINDY ETHEL (MX)
ROMINA HERNÁNDEZ (MX)
VICTORIA RUSHTON (US)
HANNELORE OCAMPO (MX)
MÓNICA MUNGUÍA (MX)
SANDRA GARCÍA (COL)
DAFNE MARTÍNEZ (MX)


CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS:

LLAMADO A PRESENTACIONES: El comité de TMX Tipografía México los invita a proponer presentaciones de su trabajo en las áreas de Diseño, Lettering, Tipografía, Editorial, Web y Apps.

Manden su propuesta a hola@tipografiamexico.com para que el comité la evalue y puedan compartir su experiencia nuestros invitados. Los requisitos son:

—Nombre y perfil profesional completo
—Sitio Web / Portafolio
—Título de Presentación y Valor de Diseño propuesto
—PDF con selección de 4 proyectos relevantes en las áreas mencionadas
—Fecha límite es 30 de Septiembre de 2018

http://tipografiamexico.com/

Women of the Bauhaus

Alice Twemlow writes on women of the Bauhaus: ‘Disproportionate, unfortunately, is the way in which the work of the male artists and designers who taught and studied at the Bauhaus have been celebrated over their female counterparts.’

Read the rest of the article here:

https://frieze.com/article/women-bauhaus

Women in Type – A social history

Women’s pivotal role in the development of type design is little known. Prof. Fiona Ross and team aim to change this, with an in-depth study of women in type-drawing offices, 1910–90.

Great reading list at https://research.reading.ac.uk/women-in-type/reading-list/ 

How will we queer design education without compromise?

As educators, the design canon is often the foundation of our practices, but it is inherently reliant on impenetrable binaries. What would a queering of design education look like? What would a pedagogical approach that emphasizes asking questions instead of problem solving consist of? How can we understand designers as bodies in space, with agency, instead of simply “creatives”? And how can we understand bodies of text as living things that produce difficult conversations, instead of simply “content”? In the age of capitalist innovation and professionalization, our focus cannot only be about best practices, creativity, and collaboration. A queering of design education is an opening, an unclosable gap. We must critique our own critiques. We must embrace a multiplicity of perspectives. We must reimagine the past in service of the future. We must cannibalize the canon. We don’t know what these structures might look like and they too will change, but we must go into the unknown, together.

Soundboard features an array of perspectives on pressing issues of our time by figures inside the arts and out—in one interface:

We Can Listen and Push Back at the Same Time, by Kristina Ketola Bore

Let's Talk About Body Reproduction, by Nate Pyper

We Must Make Queer Praxis Accessible, by Ginger Brooks Takahashi

We Must Topple the Tropes, Cripple the Canon, by Ramon Tejada

Feminism Takes Form

By Kristina Ketola Bore

Design has always held the potential to communicate feminist values. Through the transition from a messenger to a creator of content, designers now have more possibility to shape these values than ever before. 

Read the text here: http://www.contemporaryartstavanger.no/feminismen-tar-form/ (Norwegian language first, scroll down for English)

“Kristina Ketola Bore is a design critic, curator, and educator based in Oslo, Norway. She is a co-founder of the platform, The Ventriloquist Summerschool, a subeditor of the art journal Periskop, and lectures internationally at universities and cultural institutions. Her work investigates the social structures within and outside of design, in addition to participation and the role intersectionality and feminisms can play in the design field. These perspectives are also deployed in the act of curation, which has resulted in series of educational art programming for both youth and adults.”

(source: https://walkerart.org/magazine/authors/kristina-ketola-bore)

Jihee Lee — intersectional diagram to represent racism and discrimination in daily life against Asians and people of color

Jihee Lee is a Korean graphic designer who studied and works in Germany. She worked on the normalization of stereotypes and racism, in everyday life, but also in visual culture. For instance on the famous website dafont, with categories such as Foreign Look and subcategory Chinese, Jpn which represent a very stereotyped, Western, view of Asian fonts and culture.

Together with So Jin Park, she created I AM ANGRY!, a website and design project which alerts to the racism and discrimination in daily life against Asians and people of color.

Intersectional diagram, I AM ANGRY!, 2016

Stereotypography, in Somewhere in Between, 2016

Read the article on Jihee Lee’s work on AIGA Eye on Design: https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/how-jihee-lee-breaks-down-the-cultural-boundaries-built-by-stereotypes/

Alphabettes

‘Alphabettes.org is a showcase for work, commentary, and research on lettering, typography, and type design. Our loose network is here to support and promote the work of all women in our fields.’

Find out more about this excellent initiative on www.alphabettes.org or the twitter feed twitter.com/alphabettes_org

Black Pin

This set of posters by Catherine Griffiths highlights the unequal balance between male and female designers in the Designers Institute of New Zealand's Black Pin awards.

'Each year the Designers Institute of New Zealand awards two Black Pins, its supreme award. For the past two decades, 43 Black Pins have been awarded, of which 40 have gone to men and 3 to women. For this year’s Best Design Awards (to be announced in September), of the 9 convenors of juries for judging the nine main categories and various sub-categories, 8 are men and 1 is a woman. Of the jurors and convenors combined, 46 are men and 15 are women. The jury for the Value of Design Award is made up of men only, no women. How has this happened? Where are the women?'

Read more on Catherine's Twitter feed or on alphabettes.org

Women in type

A social history of women’s role in type-drawing offices, 1910–1990
A lecture by Fiona Ross and Alice Savoie

Atypi Antwerp
13 September 2018, 9:20am

Fiona Ross and Alice Savoie will introduce a significant new University of Reading research project funded by the Leverhulme Trust that draws on their experiences as type designers and historians. Fiona and Alice will describe how this interdisciplinary research project will provide the first socio-historical analysis of women’s role in the male-dominated British type-manufacturing industry during the 20th century. The project examines the positions women achieved and their responsibilities in the type-drawing offices of the British companies of Monotype and Linotype, at a time when the industry was transformed by external socio-historical factors and significant technological developments. The research team, which includes Helena Lekka, examines this subject in three interrelated ways: in terms of social history; in relation to technological developments; and in terms of contributions to typeface design. The talk will illustrate how, through archival research and interviews, an account can be recorded of the largely overlooked, yet pivotal, involvement of women in the type design process. The research project aims to make a significant contribution to social and design histories, while informing current design practitioners.

More info and tickets on the Atypi website

Image from @alphabettes_org Twitter feed

A week at Eike König’s female-led and thought-provoking After School Club

“With money no consideration, After School Club represents something very unique in the design industry, usually an elitist environment due to the middle-class white men who act as its gatekeepers. Instead, it refreshingly presents an equal playing field of disciplines, backgrounds and identities. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that its fourth edition this year embodied this naturally forward-thinking ethos into its line-up, inviting only female speakers.”

An article by Lucy Bourton on It's Nice That


Image: Isabel Seifert

Read the article here.
Visit the After School Club's website.

afFEMation — influential women in Australian design history

afFEMation is a website and project “making heroes of women in Australian graphic design”

 

In 2016 Jane Connor sent an online survey out to stakeholders in the graphic design industry in Australia, asking them to list women who had made a significant contribution to graphic design in Australia since 1960. 142 names were listed and the top 25 most mentioned women were approached to take part in this project.

The afFEMation project stems from her belief that designers included in the history of Australian graphic design should be measured by their local influence rather than by their connections abroad, Connor writes in a post on Eye Magzine's blog.

Visit the website of the project: http://www.affemation.com/

See also the article on Eye Magazine: http://www.eyemagazine.com/blog/post/invisible-women-in-australian-graphic-design

Elizabeth Friedlander exhibition

Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft presents the story of outstanding artist, designer and typographer Elizabeth Friedlander. The work of Friedlander (1903-1984) is instantly recognisable as mid-20th century design at its best, but few will know the name behind the art. Best known for her Penguin book covers and Bauer Type Foundry typeface ‘Elizabeth’, the exhibition touches on her escape to London from 1930s Nazi Germany, friendship with her sponsor – poet and printer Francis Meynell – and her work with a wartime British black propaganda unit. The show includes rarely-seen works from the artist’s compelling career including type design, wood engravings, decorative book papers, maps and commercial work.

The exhibition is co-curated by video artist and author Katharine Meynell, grand-daughter of Francis Meynell, who recently shone a light on Friedlander’s little-known story by writing and producing ‘Elizabeth’, a film about the artist.

Read more here

Kerning the Gap

Kerning The Gap is a collective of like-minded people who want to see more women in design leadership roles, hear their voices and be inspired to create change.

http://www.kerningthegap.com/

And She Was Like: BÄM!

Young female artist and designers from the Rhineland get together. From their website (via Google translate): ‘And She Was Like: BÄM! stands for a contemporary feminism that does not follow any dogma, that lives in diversity and diversity, that unites gender and generations. We believe that together we can achieve more, be seen and heard. We want to increase the visibility of women, create awareness of feminist issues and act together.’

Find out more here http://andshewaslikebam.de/

Hidden Women of Design

Hidden Women of Design is an initiative aiming to increase the visibility of female designers in the industry, through talks, workshops and events. Read what founder Lorna Allan has to say about it on It's Nice That.

We Are Here

We Are Here: British BME Women is an artist-led and artist-run platform created by Erin Aniker and Jess Nash who met at university. The aim is to provide an open platform for discussion around what it means to be British, led by BME women. The increase in anti-immigration rhetoric since the referendum to leave the EU last June makes the project particularly poignant. 

Initially starting out as a standalone exhibition at Alev Lenz Studio in Shoreditch (July 2017), it featured a mix of fourteen handpicked, established and emerging British, BME, Women artists, creating artwork that explored their dual identities and heritage. Erin and Jess were overwhelmed with the response to the exhibition so they decided to turn this into an ongoing project and platform, going on to work with Dulwich Picture Gallery and now LSE Library. 

https://www.grafik.net/category/news/here-now
http://www.we-are-here.co.uk/
http://www.we-are-here.co.uk/2018/02/lse-new-suffragettes.html

WD+RU archive website

From the About page:

‘The Women’s Design + Research Unit (WD+RU) was founded in 1994 with the intent of raising awareness about women working in the field of visual communication and design education. WD+RU has never operated as a commercial studio but functions more as a collective, collaborating with students or design professionals who join the core team of Siân Cook and Teal Triggs in the realisation of self-initiated projects or responding to specific project invitations.

WD+RU’s focus has gradually changed more towards encompassing general social responsibility rather than just focusing on ‘women’s issues’, but all projects are underpinned by a core feminist philosophy and approach. WD+RU is an inclusive organisation interested in facilitating initiatives that give voices to communities that do not have a platform.’

http://wdandru.tumblr.com/

Women of Graphic Design

A project focused on exhibiting the contributions of women in graphic design and exploring issues of gender-equality in education provided by design institutions.

www.womenofgraphicdesign.org

http://womenofgraphicdesign.org/

Not a Muse

Silva Baum, Claudia Scheer and Lea Sievertsen speak with female graphic designers about the issues they face. Essential reading!

www.notamuse.de