Beatrice Warde in Her Own Voice

Listen to Beatrice Warde as she speaks on Australian radio.
http://www.typeradio.org/#/519

Ways of Seeing

Watch the second episode of John Berger's BBC television series Ways of Seeing (1972) here, to get an early example of a feminist reading of art and advertising.

Interview with Marsha Rowe

A What I find most fascinating is that you decided to share all the tasks except graphic design.
M No, that did come in. Because those days it was still all cut out, big pasted up on boards, everyone ended up getting much more involved in what type size, headings and the images and what to chose.

A So there was an involvement in the design?
M Yes there was, but there was a person co-ordinating and making the final decisions. And everyone got to learn a bit but some people couldn’t do it. It was a skill, you have to be very good with your hands to do those paste ups and you have to have a flare for it, so it just couldn’t be easily collectivised. You still had people responsible for specific things, so right up to collective days, you had someone in charge with design, and someone responsible for music or features.

I interviewed Marsha Rowe, the founder of Spare Rib, for Treating of Matters in 2010. You can read it in full here.

Spare Rib's first dummy, 1972

A Strange Way to Look at a House

If Otto Neurath has a monograph dedicated to him (Otto Neurath – The Language of Global Polis), the work of Marie Neurath deserves at least a mention (especially since she is hardly mentioned at all in the book above). She trained as a mathematician and worked on developing a system for visualising social information, which she named Isotype (International System Of TYpographic Picture Education) with long-time collaborators Otto Neurath and Gert Arntz.


Isotype Revisited
Hyphen Press

"We have all been inside a house, but how different it looks when it is cut through with our magic knife!" spread from book If you could see inside (Marie Neurath, 1948, from the 'Wonders of the modern world' series, London: Max Parrish)

How long do animals live? from Compton's Pictures Encyclopedia, Chicago, 1940 edition

Women’s Design + Research Unit

‘The Women’s Design + Research Unit was established in the mid 90s, at a time when the graphic design profession was undergoing massive changes and the introduction and spread of new technologies was revolutionising the industry forever. Highlighting the role of women in design and in particular, their relationship to new technology, WD+RU also set out to condemn traditional male power structures in design.’

Read an interview with Teal Triggs and Siân Cook of Women’s Design + Research Unit on Birdwatching.

Ellen Lupton

Two articles by Ellen Lupton

‘Today, women are among the most influential designers of American books, having forged key paradigms in the exterior packaging and internal architecture of jacket and page.’
Read more on Typotheque

‘Younger mothers, I’ve learned, are more likely to stay at home with their small children than women my age. I was born in 1963, at the tail end of the Baby Boom, and I grew up in a household with two working parents, always believing that work would define my life.’  Read more on AIGA or Ellen's website