Non-existent Design: Women and the Creation of Type

When invited to participate in an exhibition about typefaces, called Frische Schriften/Fresh Type, in the Museum of Design in Zürich in 2004, I was the only female out of more than 25 designers to exhibit recent digital font designs. This fact went almost entirely unmentioned in the accompanying catalog published on the occasion of the exhibition, with the exception of François Rappo’s contribution. His essay “Write It, Damn You, Write It!” ( Janser, 2004) very briefly acknowledges the lack of gender diversity among type designers: What about the “softer” culture-oriented fields, the “gender bent?” How does the “techno” thematic emphasis [form] fit in with the realization, be it simply empirical, that the designers represented here (but also in graphic design in general) are predominantly and insistently male? (p. 86) Rappo raises the issue of gender in relation to design and the stereotypical association between technology and masculinity. Being the only female invited among these boy whiz kids, I put the blame first on the country’s retrogressive gender equality, and second–stereotyping myself–on women’s reluctance to deal with technology. But somehow these explanations for the lack of female representatives didn’t completely satisfy me, especially since over time I came across other signs that indicated a global predominance of male type designers. One hint of this is TypeBase, an online type site listing type creators and offering detailed information on 31 designers, of whom Émigré co-founder Zuzana Licko is the only woman designer featured. This lack of gender diversity is also evident in publications featuring type designs, which are perhaps unintentionally filled with alphabets created by a majority of male designers. To this day, there are very few women who have made it into the ranks of accomplished and industry-accepted type designers. Out of the 478 font designers represented by the Linotype type foundry only 59 (12.3%) are female. A brief survey of the gender of invited speakers at recent international typographic conferences such as ATypI, TypeCon, and Typo Berlin also discloses strikingly unequal numbers: for example, ATypI (2003, 2004) and TypeCon (2003, 2004) reveal an average of 15 percent female contributors (Figure 1). Out of the total of 68 invited presenters at the Typo Berlin (2004) only 5 were female. The current climate still prevailing at type conferences is one of male “type gurus.” According to an entry in Typographica, an online journal of typography and a popular blog site, the program planning committee for the 2004 ATypI conference–Crossroads of Civilization in Prague–consisted of nine prominent, male typographers. Women subconsciously have to conform to the conference culture around them. In 1994 (11 years ago), the Women’s Design Research Unit (WD+RU) was established as a response to the male-dominated platform of speakers for the London FUSE ‘94, the interactive publication and conference for innovative typeface design. The problem of exclusion of female professionals was inadvertently stressed. It became obvious that the profession was not accurately represented in terms of female contributors. Apparently the situation has not evolved much since then. This article aims to shed light on the reasons behind the scarcity of female type designers and attempts to suggest strategies for remedying the situation. Some of the questions under discussion are: What measures could be taken to improve gender inequality in the field of typography in the 21st century? What would be the value of more women designing type and contributing to typography? What forms of unconscious resistance are there that hold women back from feeling part of type design and typographic culture?

Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd from Sibylle Hagmann, Assistant Professor, University of Houston (© Sage Publications, 2005)