Dissertation research- Books

Dissertation Research-Books

Women in graphic Design 1890-2012 Frauen Und Grefik-Design (Gerda Breuer, Julia Meer (ED./HG.)

(65) ‘For many reasons, which are also linked to historical processes, women are only marginally represented in the field of graphic design. Nevertheless, a number of female designers made important contributions to a history of poster design that takes no account of gender differences.’

(67) ‘In 1853, The New York Times ran a brief article applauding the establishment of The Ladies Paper, a publication that employed women to create the ‘typography’ of its pages. The journal’s business management and editorial content remained safely in the care of men, while the ‘merely mechanical routine’ of typesetting was delegated to women. Praising this arrangement, the writer explained that giving women opportunities for employment would improve their lot far more than arguing about lofty concepts of ‘Women's Rights’ or the ‘intellectual equality’ of the sexes.’

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(67) ‘Graphic design is a mode of art, a form of discourse, and a contribution to the broader sphere of culture. For the vast majority of designers. For the mass majority of designers, however graphic design first and foremost an economic activity. Design has offered women a decent means of support since the nineteenth century, and it continues to do so today. In the United States (USA), tens of thousands of women find employment at every level of the field, from a stay-at-home pieceworker to a production artist to independent entrepreneur to creative director.’

(69) ‘A book is a physical artifact and a medium of communication. 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.’

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(69) ‘The printing trades has provided employment for women during the nineteenth century, especially as typesetters, although they were subject, as in other trades, to lower pay for equal work.’

(73) ‘Several women were leaders in the postmodern return to the historical styles that reshaped the top level of commercial book cover and jacket design in the 1980’s. Working in New York, designer Louise Fili literally changed the surface of mainstream publishing, rejecting the shiny finishes and garnish foil-stamping that served as a standard packaging for mass-market books. Fili’s designs for pantheon used matte, laminated coatings to create mysteriously soft yet durable, high plasticized surfaces. Her cover for Marguerite Duras’s The Lover (1983) was a lasting icon.’

(75) ‘Magazine publishing is another field where women have found opportunities to thrive. While names such as Grace Mirabella (Mirabella), Tina Brown (Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and The Daily Beast), and Anna Wintour (Vogue) have figured high on the mastheads of great magazines, women’s roles as art directors and designers have been less prominent.’

(77) ‘Although few women achieved the status of magazine art director in the 1940s and 1950s, some filled other executive positions. Estelle Ellis, a colleague and collaborator of Pineles, became promotion director of Charm, the ‘magazine for women who work’ 1944. She had also worked with Pineless on the marketing of Severn Charting women’s spending on shoes, stockings, cosmetics and other high-status items worn in the office.’

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(77) ‘Since then, several women have served as chief designers for major magazines. Bea Feitler was art director of Harper’s Bazaar, Ms., and Rolling Stone during the 1960’s and 1970s. Rhonda Rubinstein has worked since the late 1980’s as an art director at Esquire, Mother Jones, and other publications.’

(78) ‘A book or magazine is an inward volume of pages reflecting out on the world of events and ideas. Designers use words and images to directly engage the physical environment as well.’

(78) ‘Suffrage (the right to vote)was the central issue for for feminism in the early twentieth century. As art historian Paula Harper has pointed out, the suffrage posters of the 1910s (as opposed to cartoons and other graphic work) tended to be conservative in their rhetoric and visual style.’

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(78) ‘the suffragists of the 1910s pleaded their cause by suggesting that the woman’s vote would strengthen rather than destroy the existing family-based culture’.

(78) ‘Feminism's second wave unfolded within and sometimes against the anti-Establishment freedoms promoted by these movements. Posters, buttons, and bumper stickers, carrying such slogans as ‘Women’s Liberation is the Revolution’ and ‘Women are not chicks’ suggest that feminism was its own battle within the broader counterculture’.

(78-80) ‘Few women designers have willingly used the ‘f-word’, fearful, perhaps, of alienating their colleagues or of casting doubt on the legitimacy of their own success. De Bretteville articulated a set of design strategies in the early 1980s that reflected the feminist principles, such as the attempt to represent a subject from multiple perspectives, to allow viewers to complete the meaning of a communication. Such strategies coincided with the theories of experimental typography and postmodernism that were emerging around the same time’  

(80-81) ‘Paula Scher creates institutional identities that merge with the built environment. In 1991, Scher became the sole woman among over a dozen partners in the international design firm Pentagram, making what she has called, ‘the only girl in the football team’. That doesn’t make her a cheerleader or a trophy date, but an equal player in a pack of heavyweights. Pentagram brought Scher a level of visibility and cultural clout virtually unattainable to a woman working on her own, while in turn, her fresh, energetic approach earned new recognition for Pentagram, a venerable company whose reputation had begun to level off.’

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(81) ‘Scher’s work for clients ranging from museums to global corporations has grown increasingly environmental, encompassing banners, building signs, and urban advertising campaigns. In 1994, she conceived a total design program for the New York’s Public Theatre that ranges from billboards, street signs, and lobby interiors to logos, tickets, and stationary. Scher used a rhythmic mix of sans serif letterforms, drawn from the American printer’s vernacular, to construct a visual vocabulary that is both diverse and coherent-like the theatre’s programming. Many of her posters combine evocative images with dramatic typography to reflect the spirit of the production, rather than showcasing individual stars.’

(81) ‘During the last quarter of the twentieth century, women played a central role in building the discourse of graphic design. During this period, the profession came of age both as a recognized business and as a field of study in university art and design programmes, including at the graduate level. Women were no minority among the educators, critics, editors, and curators who defined the theoretical issues of the time. Schools and museums provided accessible platforms from which women could influence the direction of graphic design.’

(85) ‘Women played important roles in the evolution of graphic design across the last century and into the new one. From the revaluation of the book spurred by the Arts and Craft movement to the extension of typography beyond the printed page, women have opportunities to create work of beauty and significance, shaping the field of graphic design and as well the broader culture.’

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(85) ‘Yet despite the fantastic successes documented here, women remain minority players. It is striking how many successful women designers in the twentieth century worked in partnership with powerful male practitioners. Such connections to establish power are not inconsequential. It is easy for young designers today to discount the importance of the pioneering women who entered a less open field; it also is easy to assume that the balance of male and female students in schools of art and design insures an equal balance in the workplace. Although women represent a large part of the design profession, they still do not predominate at the very top, in terms of income or access to large-scale commissions.’

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(85) ‘The idea that women’s place is safely guaranteed and that self-assertion is neither attractive nor necessary could provide false comfort to young women working in design-or any other field-today. Although graphic design is a profession that women helped to shape, there remains ample room for expanding our opportunities. May the next generation of women designers stake out new territories in the changing landscape of media and communication.’

Why Men hate Women- Adam Jukes-Free association books-London-1993

(xxiii) ‘Masculinity is predicated on the assumption of male superiority. Sexism seems to be a function of gender division or differentiation; therefore one is to some extent, trapped in attempting to account for this.’

(9) ‘One of the major theoretical planks of feminist thinking is that of the patriarchy, the institutionalization of masculine dominance, persists and thrives precisely because men have always assumed responsibility for defining the world and, in doing so, have taken possession of it’.

(45) ‘Mothering has been defined as a functional relationship with the infant rather than a biological gender role which is exclusive to the biological mother. This is a basis for optimism for those who hold to the constructionist or cultural theory of male dominance or-as I call it, misogyny.

(105) ‘Misogyny is a universal phenomenon. All women fall victim to it and all men, to a greater or lesser degree, inflict it on them’

The Dialectic of sex- the case for feminist revolution-Shulamith Firestone-William morrow and company, inc. 1970.

(4) ‘Feminists have to question, not just of all Western culture, but the organization of nature. Many women give up in despair:if that’s how deep it goes they don’t want to know. Others continue strengthening and enlarging the movement, their painful sensitivity to female oppression existing for a purpose: eventually to eliminate it’.

(10) ‘The theory of historical materialism has brought to light some important truths. Humanity is not an animal species, it is a historical reality. Human society is is an antiphysis- in a sense it is against nature; it does not passively submit to the presence of nature but rather takes over the control of nature on its own behalf. This arrogation is not an inward, subjective operation; it is accomplished objectivity in practical action.’

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(10) ‘Thus the ‘natural’ is not necessarily a ‘human’ value. Humanity has begun to transcend Nature: we can no longer justify the maintenance of a discriminatory sex class system on the grounds of its origins in nature.’

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(10) ‘The problem becomes political, demanding more than a comprehensive historical analysis, when one realises that, though man is increasingly capable of freeing himself from the biological conditions that created his tyranny over women and children, he has little reason to want to give this tyranny up.’

(11) ‘And just as the end goal of the socialist revolution was not was not only the elimination of the economic class privilege but of the economic class distinction itself, so the end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.

(15) ‘In the radical feminist view, the new feminism is not just the revival of a serious political movement for social equality. It is the second wave for the most important revolution in history. Its aim: overthrow of the oldest, most rigid class/caste system in existence, the class system based on sex- a system consolidated over thousands of years, lending the archetypal male and female roles an undeserved legitimacy and seeming permanence.

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(15) ‘the dawn of sa long struggle to break free from the oppressive power structures set up by nature and reinforced by man.’

(15) ‘witches must be seen as women in independent political revolt: within two centuries eight million women were burned at the stake by the church-for religion was the politics of that period’

(18) ‘One may divide the women in the women's movement into two groups: the Feminists and the reformers who are not in the least Feminists; who do not care a tuppence about equality for itself.’

(20) ‘On one hand, feminism had been constricted to the single issue of the vote-the WRM and (temporarily) transformed into a suffrage movement- and on the other, women’s energies were diffused into any other radical cause but their own’

(29) ‘The cultural indoctrinations necessary to reinforce sex role traditions had become blatant, tasteless, where before they had been insidious.’

(29) ‘In the historical interpretation we have espoused, feminism is the inevitable female response to the development of a technology capable of freeing women from the tyranny of their sexual-reproductive roles- both the fundamental biological condition itself, and the sexual class system built upon, and reinforcing, this biological condition. The increasing development of science in the twentieth century should have only accelerated the initial feminist reaction to the Industrial Revolution. (Fertility control alone, for example, a problem for which the early feminists had no answer.’

(140) ‘Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth’ -Simone de Beauvoir

(140) ‘The muse is female. Men of culture were emotionally warped by the sublimation process; they converted life to art, thus could not live it.’

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(140) ‘That women were intrinsic in the very content of culture is borne out by an example from the history of art: men are erotically stimulated by the opposite sex; painting was male; the nude became the female nude’

(141) ‘But what about the women who have contributed directly to culture? There aren't many. And in those cases where individual women have participated in male culture, they have had to do so on male terms. And it shows. Because they have had to comprove themselves in their old female roles, a role at odds with their self-appointed ambitions- it is not surprisingly that they are seldom as skilled as men at the game of culture’

(142) ‘female vision of an exclusively male culture’

(143) ‘It would take a denial of all cultural tradition for women to produce even a true ‘female’ art. For a woman who participates in (male) culture must achieve and be rated by standards of a tradition she had no part in making- and certainly there is no room in that tradition for a female view, even if she could discover what it is.

(148) ‘The sex role system divides human experience; men and women live in these different halves of reality; and culture reflects this.’

Feminisms is still our name-Seven essay on historiography and curatorial practices- Edited Malin Hedlin Hayden and Jessica Sjoholm Skrubbe- Cambridge Scholars Publishing

(14) ‘While to a greater or lesser extent academic institutions, and universities and community art galleries have sponsored and supported feminist work in and on the visual arts (from studio practice to feminist art history) since the rise of the feminist art movement, it is only in the past few years that the commercial arms of the art world are seemingly obsessively interested in historical and contemporary feminist art.’

(15) ‘...perhaps this current interest [in feminism in the art world]...has to do with the daughters and sons of the movement coming of age-especially the daughters, particularly in the West. These are women who have experienced a feminist-informed system of education and now reached positions of power; women who are able not just to look back make connections and reappraise but also to green-light the exhibitions and projects that explore these very themes’

(57) ‘Few artists, scholars of art history, art critics, and curators would today claim essentialist biological criteria as the ideological foundation of their practices.’

(57/58) ‘I prefer to think of the art world as a gender-biased system, an ideologically charged system (even if biology hence sex are notions circumscribed by ideology too). Then, discrimination of e.g women artists are rather to be dismantled by analysis of culture, aesthetic, political, economic, and social power structures and valuations rather than to think and argue from a position that claims that women, artists or not, are essentially different from men (artists).

(58/59) ‘Art shows and publications that include more than one artist yet only male artists are often immediately attacked for their withholding discriminatory strategies. But when shows and publications only include women artists there are rarely any objections at all. Singling out women artists as a particular group with common interests and experiences has of course been a necessary strategy to make women artists visible in the first place.’

(65) ‘Refusing to practice an idea that these two sex and, here, gender categories are possibly equal regarding skills and critical capabilities, seems to me to practice (strategic) essentialism as a mode of self-othering, which seems to be a form of reversing the strategic per se.’

Women of Consequences, heroines who shaped the world- Xaviere Gauthier- Flammarion, S.A., Paris, 2010

191 ‘The woman of genius does not exist; when she exists, she is man’ - Octave Uzanne

192 ‘women are faced with the stark choice between creating and procreating’.

194 ‘The progress made since the early twentieth century is palpable.’

194 ‘To gain acceptance in the male worlds of literature, music, or art, women have often found it advantageous to disemble a femininity liable to sabotage their efforts’.

195 ‘I find that, in striving to be the equals of men, women are being overmodest, [and,] in wanting to imitate men, who, let us not forget, are encumbered by an out-of-date civilization, they do little more than pay them homage’.

Key concepts in Feminist Theory and Research- Christina Hughes-SAGE Publications-2002

(33) ‘In the UK it is just over three decades ago that the Equal Pay Act (1970) was passed and over a quarter of a century ago that the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) was passed. Despite these changes, parity with men in all of these arenas is yet to be achieved. And, internationally, it should be remembered that such a legislation is not a global phenomenon.’

(34) ‘For example, the assumption that equality means ‘the same’ has been explored in terms of its political and philosophical implications. The notion that women should view the masculine as the normative, that is as the goal to be achieved, is certainly not one that is ascribed to all feminists’.

(35) ‘Feminist history tells us of the significant campaigns that have been undertaken to enable women to vote, to give them access to higher education and to equal pay and conditions in the workplace. The fundamental basis of these campaigns has been the argument that, as human beings, women are the same as men. Women therefore have a right to equal treatment.’

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(35/36) ‘They are also equally entitled to the same pay for the same work and the same levels of access to education’ (Phillips, 1987; Evans, 1995.

(36) ‘Moreover, the notion of equality as a universal concept, that is a set of rules, norms and principles that are equally applicable to everyone and can be recognized and acceptable to everyone, appears at first sight to be an attractive concept for feminism.’

(36) ‘Thornton (1986) notes that there are three elements to this standard argument for sex equality. These are: women’s nature; the social treatment of women; and women’s performance.’

(36) ‘Equality is a concept that can only be applied to two (or more) things in some specified respect. There has to be characteristics which both have in respect of which they are said to be equal’. (Thornton, 1986:77, emphasis in original).

(37) ‘When we turn to the programmatic elements of equal treatment, further problems arise. For example, does equal treatment mean identical treatment?’

As these book quotes largely focus upon contextual graphic design, it is essential that I gain sources in which inform about contemporary design, as this is most relevant to my practice.