Feedback from Siân Cook

Siân Cook is one of the founding members of The Women's Design + Research Unit (WD+RU) responsible for creating the font Pussy Galore. She is also Pathway Leader, Design for Advertising, Graphic & Media Design BA (Hons) here at LCC. Below is her reply to my email which raises a few interesting points to include in my essay.

Do you feel there is a gender imbalance in the celebrity graphic designer arena?
Yes.

Who do you believe to be the most celebrated female designers of today?
Depends whether you are talking personally or publicly. I would namecheck Sheila Levrant De Bretteville, Laurie Haycock, Paula Scher (all Americans!)

From my research I have noted female designers seems to excel in the areas of book, editorial, type and social design, teaching, mentoring and writing about design, rather than commercial design. Do you believe this to be true? And if so why do you think this is?
I would broadly agree, although I do see the emergence of more women working in the area of digital media recently. This kind of relates to my next answer, but maybe women define 'success' differently to their male counterparts? Also, in my own experience, finding patterns of working that you feel comfortable with can be difficult in the overtly 'commercial' sector. I personally have no dependents or childcare issues, but i still found the 'macho' studio culture of working late and being constantly 'on-call' very wearisome (and often unnecessary).

According to the HESA and the design council 61% of creative, art and design first and post graduate degree students are female, yet only 39% of working designers are female. Why do you think this is?
In my experience on the course that I teach, female graduates often have a wider range of career options that they are willing to consider on graduating (or after a few years in the industry). We have students who end up more on the project management side or transfer their skills into writing or teaching etc. It would be an unsubstantiated guess, but my hunch is that women are often less single-minded and goal-orientated in how they view their careers and are willing to embrace other opportunities or consider how their training is not necessarily purely vocational in industry terms.