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Are Women Better Graphic Designers Than Men?

by | May 26, 2010 | Articles | 40 comments

I want to start this article by saying that I am in no way biased to one gender, and I am in no way trying to insult or undermine anyone’s level of skill or expertise. With that being said, this is something that hit me this morning.

It takes a lot to mold a person into a successful graphic designer. You have to have a keen sense of color, balance harmony and technical skill to execute your designs. Besides that, it really depends on what you are good at and how you were brought up. Women might naturally be better designers than men, not because they are more intelligent than men are. I do not believe in the idea that any gender is more dominant in any area than any other gender. It might be determined by the way that we are brought up. I hate to say this, but it is true. Women are taught at an early age to color coordinate their clothes, and to apply  their make-up based on their skin tone and what looks the most natural based on their own appearance. Men are brought up as boys to be rough, play sports, and any other thing that you can think of, but I cannot recollect any particular instance where I had to consider color and what I wore to school or to go out of the house. I wore jeans and a t-shirt, or khaki’s and a dress shirt or polo. I never had to really think about the colors, because everything goes with jeans and khakis. The only thing my parents ever told me was no to wear khakis and black shoes.

This made me begin to wonder what else might make women have an edge over men in the creative field and the next  thing that I realized is the natural expression of emotions. Men are taught to keep their emotions to themselves and up until the 90’s men never really got in touch with their emotions or their feminine sides. An example of this would be to imagine a boy crying in high school, and how likely he would be to endure bullying because of it. If a girl cries in school, most people wouldn’t think much of it, except that they were upset. This isn’t exactly fair, but it’s the truth. This is huge in graphic design, because if you are marketing to a female audience, as with products catered to women, then you need that emotional connection. In all forms of advertising our entire point, where we are most successful, especially in branding, is where we make an emotional connection between the consumer and a brand or product. Is that why some of the most successful marketing and branding experts are women? Are women better graphic designers because of our gender standards and how we think gender roles should be? Is it because of the difference in how we are raised?

I know through practicality that we are all on an even playing field with artistic talent and knowledge, but you almost have to wonder if our upbringing has an effect on our overall view in our designs. Men are not coaxed into considering color and composition as much as women are, unless they were trained in their art classes during school. What do you think? Bringing up these points, do you think that women are naturally better designers than men, or are we all equal no matter the circumstances?

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