Graphic design doesn't have the best reputation for gender equality, it is traditionally male dominated - most design work spoken about and given praise is that a man has created. However women have had a real impact on shaping graphic design to what it is today.
The Suffrage Era and Protest Art
Before graphic design was formalised as a profession, related fields such as decorative arts, fashion design and art were still heavily dominated by men.
However, at the turn of the 20th century, women were starting to cause ripples socially, and early forms of graphic design played a part in making these ripples expand. Poster design and caricature were practiced by many, mostly male, artists, but in Britain the suffragettes quickly realised that they too could use this medium to further their cause for gaining voting equality.
Artist Hilda Dallas designed some of the posters in support of the suffrage movement. In fitting with the Art Nouveau style that was widely popular at the time, these posters presented an optimistic vision of equality.
The Suffrage Era and Protest Art
Before graphic design was formalised as a profession, related fields such as decorative arts, fashion design and art were still heavily dominated by men.
However, at the turn of the 20th century, women were starting to cause ripples socially, and early forms of graphic design played a part in making these ripples expand. Poster design and caricature were practiced by many, mostly male, artists, but in Britain the suffragettes quickly realised that they too could use this medium to further their cause for gaining voting equality.
Artist Hilda Dallas designed some of the posters in support of the suffrage movement. In fitting with the Art Nouveau style that was widely popular at the time, these posters presented an optimistic vision of equality.
“Votes for Women”, Bertha M. Boye, 1911
Lacking in protest art, the California suffrage campaign borrowed an idea from the English suffrage movement and organized poster competitions to source new designs. This print won Bertha M. Boye $50 as a prize for best poster and was used for San Francisco College’s Equal Suffragette League postcards and placards.
The print’s slogan, writ with an elegant hand, doesn’t appear as an argument or threatening battle cry, instead, it reads as a reliable, unassailable truth. While many 19th century feminists had taken a revolutionary stance against society and its institutions, the suffragettes of the early 20th century suggested that the women’s vote would strengthen rather than destroy the existing culture. Its artwork, steeped in tradition, reflected that line of thought.
With a symmetrical design that reinforces the sense of tranquillity emanating from the stoic figure at its centre, Boye’s classic suffragette poster also makes use of symbolic colours and classical imagery to emphasise stability.
“Fuck housework”, Virtue Hathaway, nom de plume of Shirley J. Boccaccio, originally published in 1971
In a 1975 journal published by the New York City-based radical feminist group the Redstockings, an artist named Shirley Boccaccio—under the pseudonym Virtue Hathaway—tells the story of what she calls “The Great Poster Rip-Off.” It concerns her memorable 1970s poster design, which depicts a woman breaking her broom with the defiant snarl of a witch spread across her face. She stands under a banner of oppressive old English lettering while a twirl of ironic script wisps around her dress.
Virtue’s “Fuck Housework” poster became a cult hit at the time; it was printed, reproduced, copied, and sold, and since she copyrighted the image in 1971, the artist quickly enjoyed the fruits of her labor. Its success allowed for Virtue to provide for herself and her three small children (they’d previously been making ends meet on $320 a month) while also pursuing her dream of becoming a children’s author. A year after its success though, a big poster company stole the design, using its image on crockery and distributing the product in its stores across the States.
After hiring a lawyer and going to court, the judge denied Virtue’s case, calling the image “patently obscene”, a poster “against public policy and does nothing but demean our society”. With the oppressive word of the law weighing heavily over her, Virtue replied:
“He is right. The poster is an expression of outrage against public policy, the public policy of exploiting women.”
Ultimately, her lawyers cheated her too, and Virtue was thrown back into poverty.
“Woman Freedom Now”, Faith Ringgold, 1971
Given her activist efforts and role as cofounder of several support groups for black women artists, in the 1970s, the artist Faith Ringgold became the ideal candidate to help spearhead the gender crusade in the USA. Woman Freedom Now was one of a series of Ringgold’s advocacy placards, a design which writer and activist Amiri Baraka has christened a “modern classic” because it was one of the first works of graphic design to endorse feminism within the context of black liberation. This combination is expressed by a color scheme signifying solidarity with Black Power and text that salutes the women’s movement.
The poster adopts the form of a Bakuba chevron derived from Kongo textile design. Its configuration is effected by the joining of a series of red, black and green paper triangles, within which its three words are etched forward, backward and in reverse. They grow and repeat like a resounding, continual chant; the triangular formation of the typography evocatively implying a voice that grows loudly, and a visual echo of the shouting woman of Rodchenko’s famous print, who also has a triangle of text issuing from her mouth.
Ringgold’s interpretation of op art is effective: it transfixes one’s gaze on its kaleidoscope of ever-changing planes. Its typographic nature on the other hand makes for a straightforward, readable, and literal billboard. Poster art represented Ringgold’s first response to the Black Arts Movement’s demand for “art for the people”.
“I March For All Womankind”, Deva Pardue, 2016
“When it comes to protest art, the importance of immediacy can’t be underestimated. Saying something with as little clutter as possible resonates the most,” says Deva Pardue, the New York-based designer whose powder pink and revolutionary red posters for the 2016 Women’s March went viral during the lead-up to the protest. Its sister print, Instagrammed by Rihanna, Naomi Campbell, and Reese Witherspoon to name a few, is similarly straightforward about the march’s goal for intersectionality: on it, three fists strike the air, each a different skin colour and all with matching red nails. Druk Super Condensed, a typeface by designer Berton Hasebe, packs a similar punch when used for Pardue’s typographic print, and juxtaposes the soft, traditionally feminine color palette to subtly destabilize stereotypes. Over 4,000 people in the U.S. alone downloaded free PDFs of the design for the march, and the online sale of prints raised thousands of dollars to benefit two non-profits advancing reproductive freedoms in the States.
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