Two Female Graphic Designers, and Reflections.

November 18th, 2009 | Posted in Journal | 1 Comment »

This morn­ing, buried in the com­ments of this post about 8 inspi­ra­tional design­ers, most of whom I’d heard of, I found a link to this post about 7 inspi­ra­tional female design­ers, most of whom I hadn’t heard of, but had seen some of the work before. There I found two female design­ers, in par­tic­u­lar, who’s work really hit me, and I think I’d like to follow.

Con­sider them documented:

Mar­ian Bantjes:

Her hand­writ­ten typog­ra­phy, swirly flour­ishes, and work with ball point pens (no kid­ding!) made me an instant fan. She has an incred­i­bly con­ve­nient sec­tion in her “About Me” that includes answers to Fre­quently Asked stu­dent ques­tions, that allows you to learn a lot about her, and her inspi­ra­tions, influ­ences and References.

Laura Smith

Retro, Art Deco, illus­tra­tions and typog­ra­phy… I love the col­ors and the style here and on her site. These things make me happy!

To be fair, on the first post, I really liked Ital­ian Graphic Artist Alberto Seveso and Logo Designer Gra­ham Smith. But in look­ing at the roundup of 7 females, I real­ized that in all the lis­ten­ing and read­ing I’ve done in the last cou­ple of years, the men­tion of boys in the pod­casts far out­weighs the men­tion of girls.

In dis­cussing this with Prof. Benjy, he attrib­utes this to 3 things that have absolutely noth­ing to do with tal­ent or abil­ity, which are at least equal in men and women. 1. Male’s com­pet­i­tive­ness and drive to be #1, while Women are more prone to work coop­er­a­tively, 2. Male dis­crim­i­na­tion, and 3. The woman’s pos­ses­sion of the uterus. This third one is chang­ing as men become more involved in the lives of their chil­dren. There may be more than this, these are just the things that are imme­di­ately clear to him, and make per­fect sense to me.

It has noth­ing to do with the idea that boys are bet­ter than girls, it’s just that girl’s names tend to get lost in the jumble.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not really angry about this. It’s just the way it is. There are women out there, fan­tas­tic, tal­ented women like Laura Smith and Mar­ian Ban­t­jes, for me to up to. It’s just a mat­ter of find­ing them, and maybe becom­ing one myself. Both are things I plan to do.

So, the moral of this story? It pays to look in the com­ments of the blogs you read

ps. If you are angry about the oppres­sion of women in the world of art– Benjy says check out Guer­rilla Girls. And I ask that you put that anger to bet­ter use than to just com­plain about it.

Tags: Artistic Excitement, Typography