Girls Just Want To Design

Little did I know that when I walked into JLB the first day that I would be tipping the gender scale in favor of the females. And it was about time! The male-dominated world has slowly but surely been turned upside down by its female counterparts.

The same goes for the graphic design world. Though not as well known, female graphic designers have been producing great things for a long time. Thanks to Philip B. Meggs’ Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, I was able to brush up on some history. Here’s just a few that have been an inspiration to me.

•    Ethel Reed – In the late 1800s, Reed emerged as the first American female designer. At age 18, she was a well-known book illustrator and poster designer.

•    Cipe Pineles – A personal favorite of mine, Pineles is known for her editorial design for such magazines as Seventeen and Glamor. She was also the first woman to be admitted into the New York Art Directors Club.

•    April Greiman – With her “new attitude toward space,” Greiman helped graphic elements become something to design. She embraced the new computer technology and played with overlapping screen information

•    Paula Scher – Scher is best known for using design elements of the past to create new and exiting work today. Inspiration from Art Deco and Russian Constructivism helped get her work into permanent museum collections. She is one of two female partners at Pentagram.

•    Carol Twombly – As a staff type designer at Adobe, she created the first three display fonts of Adobe originals (Charlemagne, Lithos, and Trajan).

Today there are thousands of talented and inspiring female designers out there. I encourage you to look up a few that I mentioned above and to find some that are out there designing great things today. You will be impressed, I promise.

How did I get on this feminist train of thought? Maybe I have just been really inspired lately. Or maybe it’s because I have been working in a small room with two guys for eight weeks.

You be the judge.