Summary
Looking into different areas of gender and design and finding out different peoples personal opinions on different aspects such as colour, type, photography, and overall presentations.
Do different genders relate specific colours to themselves? What about activities, are something’s just for men and not for woman or vice versa? Do certain genders find it offensive if something is advertised more towards the one gender?
In this article I will look into all these kinds of things and also look into why woman weren’t accepted to study art at certain schools, and when and how this all changed. “Design Values make up an important part of what influences a designer, when they make their design decisions, However, designers are not always influenced by the same values and intentions” Is this because of their gender or because of the schools they have studied at? It may well be both, the designers personal opinion to his or hers work or they could have got into certain design habits when they were taught at art school.
History
Gender and design is quite a broad subject. Not much history relates specifically to this, as it is quite self-opinionated. Some people might think that a certain design or advertising campaign is related more to a certain sex whereas other people might not think this at all. It’s just the way the individual mind works.
Women once weren’t allowed to study art and design in certain countries, whereas in other countries there were large percentages of woman students. “The Debschitz School was unusual in that throughout its history, the student body had a large percentage of woman. This was no coincidence: woman who aspired to become professional artists in Germany at the end of the nineteenth centaury has even fewer educational opportunities than their counterparts in France, England and USA.” Whereas “Ecole des Beaux-Arts had begun accepting woman students in 1897.”
Its almost like back in the day it was frowned upon if woman went to study, but that all changed. “ As woman no longer wanted to abide by their dependence on parents, spouses, relatives and society but rather seek to earn their own living, do not want to live echo-lives but their own.”
Also colour is a big issue when it comes to Gender and Design. “Our reaction to colour is instantaneous and has a profound impact on the choices we make.”
How come when babies are born we automatically buy blue if it’s a boy and pink if it’s a girl. According to the website www.genderspecificcolours.com “it would seem that assigning colour to gender is mostly a 20th centaury trait. It would also seem that at one time, the colour associations were reversed. When colour first came into use as a gender identifier. In fat this reversal of what we consider normal was considered conventional, even in the 20th centaury.” Apparently at one point pink was considered of a boys colour, as a watered down red, and blue was considered a girls colour.
Gender and Design is very relevant to designers, they must take into consideration their target market when designing. I suppose in some cases it could be quite tricky to design something such as an advert or poster for both genders depending on the product, but in most cases I personally find it easy to be able to design for both genders.
A great example of gender and Design is the ‘Persil’ advert. All those years of similar adverts promoting the same things such as washing powder, washing up liquid, dishwasher tablets etc all used females in their campaigns. This gave the message that all these were woman’s jobs as it was only woman that promoted the product. Until the new ‘Persil’ advert came along, and instead of a woman it was a man promoting the product, This was a great advertising campaign, not only did woman all over the country appreciate this but the men also enjoyed it too, to a certain extent. It somehow made them feel powerful. I personally think it would be great if companies could promote their product by not insinuating that it is either a man or woman’s job, this way the designers would actually be designing for their target market and not just for one specific sex.
Another advert I have noticed is the new ‘Joop’ advert, Promoting men’s aftershave. Although this is aimed at men, and men are the target market, their slogan says ‘Joop…. real men wear pink’ Again this is brilliant. This adverts clearly stating that pink is not just a girl’s colour. It almost got the message out that colours aren’t specifically designed for different genders, but not quite. But it did give the message out that men can wear pink too. It’s a real mans colour.
For so long we have associated different colours with genders, symbols and meanings. But my research tells me that it is forever changing. It also comes down to your on thoughts and feelings towards the design. We automatically associate pink with girls and the new joop advert is starting to change that.
Overall designers must take into consideration gender when designing. This way they wont put the wrong message across to people, for example they wont advertise something for all sexes in a very femine or masculine way but will design something that is suitable and appealing to both genders.
Maybe in the future we will start to see more advertising campaigns that are more open to gender and try to make a change in the sexist aspect.
References
Alexander, Z (2009) Jugendstil Visions: Occultism, Gender and Modern Design Pedagogy, Journal of Design History, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 203-226, Sep 2009
Kivimaa, K (2007) images of Woman as the Signifiers of the Soviet and National Identity in Estonian socialist Realist Painting and Graphic Art, Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi 16 no3 2007.
www.wikipedia(arcatecturaldesignvalues).com
www.genderspecificfactors.com
www.miltonbayer.com
www.genderstudies.cz/download
