“The Women Redressing the Gender Imbalance in Typography” by Madeleine Morley.
Madeleine Morley is, according to her website, a design writer and editor who is from Berlin but currently based in London. Her writings can be found in a variety of well known magazines, including The Observer, Creative Review, Elephant Eye, and Dazed and Confused Magazine. She has held positions such as editor for magCulture and senior editor for AIGA’s Eye on Design. She has also held many lectures about design. Based on the amount of work and positions she’s held, her writings are definitely credible and is a good source.
In this article by Morley, she addresses the lack of women who are represented in the world of typography. Right away she gives us a stat about how at TypeCon in 2015 “there were 52 men speaking and 15 women.” She mentions how this probably stems from the ages of printing which was so heavily male dominated. Even with these inequalities, people have been addressing this, even in the 90s. In around 2016, at the time this article was written, Typographics and TypeCon made a better effort in getting more equality, and this change is due to the women leading onward in the industry. Morley first talks about how in 1994 the typeface Pussy Galore was born for Fuse magazine, which was part of the start in feminist typefaces addressing concerns of lack of visibility of women in typography. Morley also dives into why there is a lack of representation of women, quoting Verena Gerlach who says it’s because typography is considered more of a technical profession by people, and there is also a lack of role models for women to look up to and learn from. Another aspect is of course the media, and how media needs to not be lazy. Instead of interviewing the same people, they need to branch out and get more representation. The last section Morley talks about is the stereotyping with typography. The actual look and feel of serif fonts and sans serif fonts says a lot, and type designers need to be aware of what messages these convey.
Morley, Madeleine. “The Women Redressing the Gender Imbalance in Typography.” Eye on Design, AIGA, 28 Sept. 2016, eyeondesign.aiga.org/the-women-readdressing-the-gender-imbalance-in-typography/.
