The invisible women of Australian graphic design

Jessie Stanley was recently added to the online canon of women in Australian graphic design. Photo: Carmen Holder & Deborah Jane Carruthers.

6 min read

Despite high numbers in the profession, many women graphic designers remain alarmingly invisible. Designer and Lecturer in Communication Design Jane Connory outlines her research on the invisibility of women in Australian graphic design and the work needed to achieve more equitable outcomes.

This article was originally published on Parlour .

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I landed my first job as a junior art director straight out of university in the mid-1990s. My parents were as proud as punch and so was I. The atmosphere was extremely heady and exciting for a sheltered girl from Melbourne’s western suburbs. Deadlines were tight, lunches were long, and I was being paid to be creative. For a short naive moment, I thought I had made it – but it did not take long for the reality to sink in.

I began my career only three years out of high school with the expectation that my degree and polished portfolio would take me places. Yet it was the junior boys who were taken under the wing of the senior directors. They got all the benefits of the boy’s club and their careers took off, while I struggled to find women in creative positions of leadership to help me do the same.

For more than two decades my career progressed though jobs as a graphic designer in publishing, branding and illustration. Then I had children and shifted my focus to be an educator and researcher. It was there that I realised my students were still not being exposed to the achievements of women in graphic design. This lack of visibility of women who had made significant contributions to the industry put students at a disadvantage. It demonstrated that gendered inequity has not improved in decades.

This invisibility devalues women’s contributions and stifles self-efficacy among each student cohort. I knew women were present, as my network had grown to connect with many, but their achievements seemed invisible in the educational environment. It was this moment of realisation that led to my PhD, The View from Here, a research project that explored this invisibility and advocated for women’s equity and autonomy in the graphic design industry.

Counting to make it count

Demonstrating that women were invisible in Australian graphic design required more than just a hunch. Yet when I went looking for the data that measured it, it was not there. So, I went directly to the source and surveyed the industry to see who could name women who had made a significant contribution to Australian graphic design since 1960. Nearly 150 women were mentioned, but people on average could only name 1.62 women. The evidence began to mount.

The Postcard Project summarised findings from the Invisible Women Survey and used red cellophane to reveal and conceal different data sets. It demonstrated that people had difficulty naming women in Australian graphic design. Photo: Jane Connory.

I then examined the pipeline of female graduates pouring out of Monash University since 1970. Here I found that women were constantly in the majority and their numbers were increasing. By 2010, 71% of these graduates were women – a percentage that is mirrored across Australia’s higher education as well as in the US and UK.

The Slushy Installation was an interactive visualisation of the data demonstrating the pipeline of women graduating from graphic design qualifications from Monash University. Photo: Arun (Ernesto) Munoz.

However, this highly visible stream of female graduates is difficult to see in industry. I collected data from three award and Hall of Fame platforms that celebrate graphic designers. These included the Australian Graphic Design Association (AGDA) awards, the Australian Book Designers Association (ABDA) awards and the Australian Writers and Art Directors Association (AWARD) awards. Again, women were mostly invisible. For example, only 25% of Creative Directors awarded in the AGDA awards were women – and no woman has ever been inducted into the AWARD Hall of Fame.

The Anonymity Exhibition visualised the gendered data set of AGDA award winners as both a poster series and woven piece of generative art. Photo: Rikki Paul Bunder.

Reasons for invisibility

Establishing data sets that demonstrated the invisibility of women in Australian graphic design was interesting, but it did not reveal the reasons for the phenomenon, which are complex and layered. They are a bi-product of the patriarchal powers in play, but are also a result of women preferring to simply stay out of the limelight.

As a design discipline, graphic design has other non-gendered issues that mean graphic designers are often invisible. The industry has been known as different things since the 1900s, including Applied Art, Commercial Art and Visual Communication. This confusion, along with the rapid evolution of a graphic designer’s role, has caused much of this invisibility. Technology has been a major influencer of this change. The Mac and design thinking have influenced a shift from graphic design being an aesthetic practice to one with a social conscience.

Ultimately, graphic design communicates something about or for a client or their audience. It is that message or function that is designed to be visible – not the designer. Many graphic designers prefer this anonymity regardless of their gender. However, the platforms that graphic designers can use to promote themselves are often skewed towards promoting men. As previously mentioned, award and Hall of Fame platforms demonstrate many unconscious biases at play.

When I interviewed women in Australian graphic design who had both judged and been awarded these accolades, the potential for change emerged. I developed a framework of gender equitable juries, which validated and connected jurors, and focused on clients, clear criteria and blind evaluations to begin creating equities on these platforms.

The #afFEMation.com website, designed by Jane Connory, increases the representation of women in Australian graphic design.

The way history is written and taught in higher education also systematically makes women invisible. The #afFEMation website was my contribution towards making heroes of women in Australian graphic design. This site features biographies, portraits, videoed interviews, galleries of work and inspirational quotes. It also visualises the social, professional and educational networks between these women in an interactive sociogram. Each profile can be shared directly to social media.

Unpacking the design process I used to create this site also resulted in a framework to improve gender equity in design histories. This framework consisted of systematic and consistent privilege checking, measured gender equity, validation of inclusion through triangulation, the rejection of referencing women only in relationship to men, and prioritising current authorship.

Heroic portraits of female graphic designers, Simone Elder (left), Sandy Cull (middle) and Fiona Leeming (right). Photos: Carmen Holder & Deborah Jane Carruthers.

During this analysis, I was cognisant of art directing the portraits to portray the women in a heroic light. I used heroic tropes of a raised chin and upward gaze – something common in male portraiture. Think of Barack Obama’s Hope poster campaign, Che Guevara’s iconic portrait, and even Superman’s power stance. The public is often uncomfortable with images of women showing power and strength. Only recently Australian Rules footballer Taylor Harris was violently trolled after an image of her mid-flight and fully extended, kicking a footy, was published online. Her visual force as an WAFL hero created an immediate backlash; however, this was reversed as a more empathetic audience applauded her efforts and career. This moment in time is now immortalised as a bronze sculpture positioned in central Melbourne. It acts as a reminder of the strength and abilities of women.

The View from Here exhibition sought to visualise the reach, impact and exposure of research by Jane Connory. Multiple projects lined the gallery walls and were each represented in a data visualisation. Photo: Joanne Manariti.

A visible impact

The View from Here was submitted as both an exegesis and an exhibition. The exhibition sought to visualise the exposure, impact and reach of all the advocacy work I had done during the research project. I could measure over 58,935 sightings of the work and showed them as a life-sized bar graph filled with ping pong balls.

The reach and impacts of projects in The View from Here were shown as concentric circles and pink circles shown at different heights. Photo: Joanne Manariti.

The show also demonstrated that my work had reached beyond academia and the graphic design community of practice to be mostly present in the wider social sphere – something that is not actively encouraged in most PhDs but should be considered as a viable metric. One of the projects with the most impact was an online article in The Conversation titled “Hidden Women of History: Ruby Lindsay, one of Australia’s First Female Graphic Designers”.

This was the most read article on The Conversation in the week that it appeared. Within four months of it being published, this article had been read 8,056 times, received 14 comments, was shared on Facebook 1,800 times, and was shared on Twitter 80 times. The popularity of this article demonstrated that the implementation of my Gender Equitable Histories framework did not affect the readability and cohesiveness of the narratives it generates. On the contrary, it suggests that referencing historical women on their own merits, and not solely in relationship to their husbands or families, is something that piques the interest of online readers.

Ruby Lindsay was one of Australia’s first female graphic designers in the early 1900s.

I entered this research project with a clear hypothesis that women were indeed invisible as graphic designers in Australia. I found this to be true, but uncovered many reasons for this. I worked hard to demonstrate how structures of power that enforce this invisibility can be rethought to create more equitable outcomes. However, I was also careful to respect the autonomy of women who chose to embrace the anonymous nature of graphic design. For every extraordinary woman I interviewed on this journey, there are thousands more who generate impactful work that we will never know.

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Jane Connory recently passed her PhD at Monash University, Art, Design and Architecture, which worked towards a gender-inclusive history of Australian graphic design. She was awarded a Master of Communication Design (Design Management) with Distinction from RMIT in 2016 and has been a practising designer in the advertising, branding and publishing sectors, in both London and Melbourne, since 1997. She has also lectured in and managed communication design programs in both the VET and Higher Education sectors since 2005. Alongside her research exploring the visibility of women in design, she is currently a Lecturer in Communication Design at Swinburne University, an Executive Board member of the Creative Women’s Circle and an Editorial Board member of the Exchanges Journal.

Published papers from Jane’s PhD, A View from Here, can be found here.

Who is Debbie Millman?

The Creative Women's Circle will be presenting Debbie Millman at Melbourne's Design Week in March 2020.

2 min read

Who is Debbie Millman?

Debbie Millman, among numerous other things, is a huge hero of mine. She is an inspirational designer, author, branding guru, educator and podcaster who believes in making a difference through design. She is also a born and bred New Yorker.

As a woman who wears many hats, Debbie Millman will be visiting Melbourne for Melbourne Design Week on the weekend of March 14 and 15. Presented by us, the Creative Women’s Circle, Debbie will be sharing her experiences in the industry through the idea of Courage vs Confidence and hosting a workshop on Visual Story Telling.

As a podcaster, Debbie hosts Design Matters which has become the world’s most downloaded design podcast. Debbie has interviewed some of the biggest names in design since her show began in 2005. They include graphic design luminaries like Stephan Sagmeister and Paula Scher. She has also used her casual interview style to get to the heart of Eat, Prey Love’s Elizabeth Gilbert, feminist author and now fiancé Roxanne Gay and artist Marina Abramović’s creative processes.

Debbie Millman is the famed founder and talent on the podcast Design Matters.

Debbie is also an educator and runs a Masters in Branding at the School in Visual Arts in New York. Here she shares her knowledge gleaned from 22 years at Sterling Brands where she was president of the design division. She has worked for over 200 of the world’s top brands and written books to help students truly understand the process.

Branding is not the only topic Debbie has written about. Her published works also include more illustrative works like Self-Portrait as your Traitor and Look Both Ways. Her most recent collaboration is Leave Me Alone with the Recipes: The Life, Art, and Cookbook of Cipe Pineles. Cipe was an unsung American designer and educator who left a big impression on Debbie. One day Cipe’s personally illustrated scrapbook, full of family recipes, was found at an antiques fair. It was this book that Debbie with Sarah Rich, Wendy MacNaughton and Maria Popova (curator of the blog Brain Pickings) reinvented into a beautiful book that everyone can now cook from.

She is an inspirational designer, author, branding guru, educator and podcaster who believes in making a difference through design.

Debbie’s passion for writing and design critique keeps expanding and she is now the Editorial and Creative Director of Print Magazine. Founded in 1940, Print Magazine was the go-to for inspiration and information for many graphic designers, however it went out of circulation in 2018. It has been Debbie’s passion for design that will ensure it will rise again this year and is something to look forward to.

In 2017 I got to meet Debbie in New York while researching my PhD on women in design. While I was certainly star-struck, it was great to find her so warm and welcoming. She has overcome a childhood of violence and abuse. She has set goals and challenged herself. She has achieved admirable career and personal success and is now at a place where she wants to share her secrets with other creative women. There is much about her to admire.

So that is who Debbie Millman is. We hope that you have your interest sparked and will see you at either her speaking event or workshop in March. 

- Jane Connory, PhD, Special Events Co-ordinator at Creative Women’s Circle

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Tickets on sale Thursday February 6, 2020:

Speaker event – Courage vs Confidence

Visual Story Telling Workshop

So you want to teach?

Jane Connory at the lectern, speaking at Design Tasmania's Women in Design conference. (Photo credit: Claire Beale)

I have been teaching Communication Design for nearly 15 years and friends who have established creative careers often ask me, ‘how do I get into teaching?’

Teaching can come up as a career option when you’re ready to give back a little or are looking to join the gig economy. Teaching can be a flexible option when you need hours that work around kids or freelance clients.

Teaching can also obviously be a full time career that can complement your creative practice. It can be fulfilling and rewarding at any level of education. But what are the first steps you need to take, to get your foot in the door?

Getting a start as a teacher in creative fields, like art and design, really depends on what level of our education system you are interested in. Your required qualification is directly co-related to the level of accreditation the students you want to teach are working towards.

For example, teaching a painting or sewing class at the local Community Arts Centre generally requires no qualification. However, working with children under the age of 18 requires a current ‘Working with Children Check’ or ‘Blue Card’. This is something you can apply for at the local post office or online and it differs in each state and territory in Australia but most cost under $100. You must go through a police check and it has to be regularly updated.

Most local council websites will have a listing of all their Community Arts Centres and the spaces and facilities they have available. You might find full computer labs, ceramics studios, kitchens, gallery spaces, community gardens, retail spaces and wet and dry studios. Generally you need to just get in touch with their programs coordinator and simply propose a program to teach.

I often taught illustration classes, folio preparation classes, ‘make your own magazine’ and other crafty classes in the school holiday programs when my children were babies. These classes were all pitched at primary and secondary school levels and were most successful when the kids got to take a completed masterpiece home.

Collaborative installation by the students at Billy Blue College of Design for Melbourne's White Night

Teaching at TAFE level is a different kettle of fish. TAFEs (Technical and Further Education) in Australia have a proud legacy of teaching highly accessible and practical courses that often fall into the realm of VET (Vocational Education and Training). However, all TAFE courses must exist somewhere on the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) and be audited by the government to make sure they are legit. As a result the way skills and knowledge is transferred and the qualifications of those teaching are regulated. So to deliver classes at a TAFE you’ll need to have a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment and ideally a qualification in the area you’d like to teach.  

You can find these Cert IV courses everywhere. They can be done face-to-face or online and can cost anywhere from $800 to $6,000. So keep looking until you find one that meets the logistical and financial requirements of your life. You’ll learn how to plan, deliver and assess classes, understand how adults learn and be introduced to online learning platforms.

Jane Connory has enjoyed teaching design at Monash University. (Photo credit: Jane Connory)

Then there is teaching at Universities. Here the demand on your qualifications is again increased. Universities generally offer Bachelor, Masters and Doctorate (eg. PhD) Degrees which also exist on the AQF. The rule here is that you must have a qualification above what you teach. For example if you want to teach in a Bachelor Degree, you need a qualification above it—which on the AQF is anything from a Bachelor Honours Degree, Graduate Certificate, Graduate Diploma, Masters Degree or Doctoral Degree.

Classes in large Universities have access to world class facilities and students from all around the world. They still often operate in the traditional form of lectures, tutorials and studio sessions. Yet, if you attended University in Australia prior to 2000, class rooms will appear a lot more diverse that you remember. During the new millennium, governments up-capped the number of graduates entering many creative industries and encouraged international students to study in Australia. It is exciting how this accessibility to Higher Education has benefitted the influences and voices you can now experience in University classrooms.

There are also options to pursue teaching at Primary and Secondary Schools. Some of the smartest people I have ever met completed a Diploma of Education straight after their Undergraduate Degree. They had the option of teaching any time during their career however, DipEds are no longer a thing which is disappointing. You now have to now do another two years, after your Bachelors Degree, to get a Masters of Teaching for either Primary or Secondary Teaching to become an accredited teacher.

Teaching at a local Community Arts Centre then TAFE and then at several Universities has been the journey that my personal teaching career has taken. The subjects I have taught have been built on my professional experiences in the graphic design industry. The flexibility of sessional teaching has allowed me to build a career around my children, but as a result I have regularly had to update my qualifications to keep in toe with my ambition. The renumeration has always been good and the other teachers and students have been the best part of my experience. I highly recommend the jump if you really want to teach.

Teaching gives you opportunities to build a profile and speak at industry events. (Photo credit: Jane Connory)

Advocating for the recognition of creative women

3 min read
At Creative Women’s Circle we know the work women do is valuable and deserves recognition. And not only the paid type, it is also all those unpaid hours which need to be celebrated and championed – whether raising a family, volunteering for a good cause or contributing hours to the creative community.

The Australian Honours System is one way that our Government celebrates such achievements, through awarding medals for achievement and distinguished service. In 2018, extraordinary women like Liz Ellis, awarded for her support and advocacy for young women and contributions to netball, the late Betty Cuthbert, awarded as an advocate for research into a cure for multiple sclerosis and her distinguish athletics career and Evonne Goolagong-Cawley, the eminent tennis player, all received Appointments as Companions (AC) by the Governor General.

Although this list of high achieving females is impressive, the reality of the Order of Australia is that since 1975, only one third of the nominations for all categories have been women and only 30 women overall have received appointments. The creative sector is also quite underrepresented, with only a handful of architects being nominated in the history of the awards.

One of our core values at the Creative Women’s Circle is empowerment and we take our mission —to champion, support and connect women, very seriously. Early in October, Samantha Jayaweera, our new President and myself, attended the Recognition Matters co-design workshop held by the Department of Premier and Cabinet and Office for Women. Here we heard the disturbingly common statistics about the systemic undervaluing of women in our society. As I write this, the media is reporting six deaths of women to domestic violence in the past seven days. Gender inequity is not only desperately unfair but also life threatening.

Upheavals in the structures of our society need to be made before any changes can be affected. Nominating more women for an Order of Australia might seem meagre in the grand scheme of things but, the narrative surrounding women needs to change from vulnerable to empowered for these behaviours to change. We believe that having a 50/50 ratio of female nominations in the Australian Honours System is one way of doing this. As Emily Lee-Ack, CEO of the Office for Women, said at this workshop, “If you’re not advancing equality, you’re reinforcing inequity.

At CWC, we believe that creative women make an impactful and important change in our community and that (unlike Wayne from Wayne’s World) we are worthy of recognition in this platform. So we challenge you to think about who, in your sphere of influence, deserves this and to put them forward for an Order of Australia. The process is surprisingly easy and you can band together with friends and family to complete the form.

It’s a common belief and harmful social norm that women often shy away from applying for jobs if they don’t meet all the criteria. Sadly, this mind set extends to other forums for achievement and recognition like Order of Australia nominations. Let’s start to change this by thinking about the strong, talented, generous women in your life that you could nominate in these categories. The criteria on the four categories are very simple, for example:

·       The Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) is for eminent achievement and merit of the highest degree in service to Australia or humanity at large.

·       The Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) is for distinguished service of a high degree to Australia or humanity at large.

·       The Member of the Order of Australia (AM) is for service in a particular locality or field of activity or to a particular group.

·       The Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) is for service worthy of particular recognition.

So, gather a group of CWC friends, brainstorm a nomination and make it happen. After all, we all make valuable contributions and deserve the recognition.

Jane Connory is a PhD candidate at Monash University, and is working towards a gender inclusive history of Australian graphic design. She has been a practising designer and illustrator in the advertising, branding and publishing sectors, in both London and Melbourne, since 1997. When she’s not teaching at Monash University you’ll find her being the National Head of Communications at the Design Institute of Australia.