‘Race and diversity in the graphic design sector has been a deep rooted issue’ (Ross, 2012). Diversity is a crucial part of everyday life so much so, that the Equality Act law was passed in 2010. This was implemented to ensure that everyone is treated fairly in the workplace. Diversity is important in the creative industry so that everyone can be included, accounted for and represented. In the design and creative industry, it is even more important as it creates more diverse outcomes as well as promotes unique and original reflective design. According to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in 2015, the Creative Industry accounted for 1.9 million jobs; 11.4% of which were of an ethnic background. The Design Council published a survey in 2010 which stated the number of designers grew by ‘nearly a third’ and since 2005 and how 60% of that increase were male and 93% were white. The Gross Value Added (GVA) of the Creative Industry was £84.1billion in 2014 and accounted for 5.2 per cent of the UK economy (Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2016). This statistics alone shows the importance of the Creative Industry in terms of providing healthy revenue to the economy. The aim of this essay is to question and investigate how diverse the industry is in terms of race and ethnicity. Through the use of web articles, books and journals, as well as interviews with academics, practicing graphic designers and other graphic design student about the experience and knowledge of the topic.
Theoretical frameworks such as Marxism will be used to explain the social mobility in terms of why BAME students are not going into creative industry. Incorporating theories will also give a wider understanding on why BAME students are being steered away from creative subjects and graphic design. Feminism and the third wave will be incorporated to emphasis the build up to diversity and inclusivity. Intersectionality will be incorporated to describe…..
Chapter One:
Lack of diversity in the creative industry and graphic design has been an reported in magazines dated back to the 1980s. Cheryl D.Miller wrote a notorious magazine article for Print Magazine in 1987 titled ‘Black Designers: Missing in Action’, which steamed out of her thesis about how low the number of black designers are. The article highlights the lack of diversity and opportunity in the industry due to the fact it was heavily dominated by white males. Miller states that ‘blacks have achieved a great deal in other creative fields because the doors to those fields were open to them years ago, to society’s benefit’ (D.Miller, 1987). Within this article, Miller interviewed many people, one if which being Hugh B. Price who was a black senior vice president at WNET/Channel 13 for six years. Price was incharge of developing and evaluating broadcast programming for WNET and also highlighted the importance of the values and experiences of minorities. He believed that it is ‘important to provide outlets for all minorities because their experiences inform and enrich the lives of the majority at large.’ Although Price’s profession was not in the same industry, his thoughts on the topic can be applied to this circumstance as he states how vital personal experiences to push creativity. It could be argued that the lack of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) designers has had a impact on the creative output in terms of how the target audience.
Many surveys have been conducted to get a wider sense and feel of a graphic designer’s day to day personal and professional life. For example, Create conducted a survey called Panic! in September and October of 2015 to ‘uncover the social background of those working in the cultural and creative industries in the United Kingdom’ (Create, 2015). Graphic Designers Surveyed is another survey which surveyed 2,500 graphic designers practicing in the United Kingdom and United States of America where asked questions about their life and life as a designer. All of the results were presented in a book. Although only 1,988 designers completed the survey, it was enough for Lucienne Roberts to present her findings with the help of data designer Stefanie Posavec. One of the most concerning question on Graphic Designers Surveyed was: ‘What is your ethnic group?’ to which 88% of designers are white in the United Kingdom and 79% in the United States of America. Having said that, only 11.8% of respondents were BAME designers with 4.5% being Asian, 1.4% Black, 4.2% Mixed and 1.7% other. Not only does this show that white designers dominate the industry, it shows how underrepresented BAME designers are.
Marxism is a theory developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the 19th century and since then, many writers, philosophers and theorist have developed the theory into many different routes. Social inequality and social mobility stems from a Marxist perspective on social class stratification. This is describes how societies have been split into two classes: bourgeoisie (the ruling class) and proletariat (the working class) over time. Additionally, Marx argued that Western society had developed through four periods in time or epochs. The modern bourgeois society (the capitalist society and fourth epoch) was when when new classes, new conditions of struggle and new condition of oppression. Social mobility describes how people move up the social ladder from proletariat to bourgeoisie and vice versa. Marxist believe that the idea of ascending the ladder is severely restricted and in fact do not climb the ladder very often.
To understand why ethnic minorities are being underrepresented in the creative industry, we must go back revise what went wrong. The Civil Rights movement was a human rights movement starting from 1954 to 1968. The movement’s main goal was to end the legalization of racial segregation and discrimination laws in the United States. There was a long history of civil rights abuse in the United States towards African-Americans, but during the time period in the United Kingdom, there was still a strong lack of civil rights for black people. During the 1950s, workers from the Caribbean, especially Jamaica, were invited to come work in Britain as labourers and transport workers to fill job vacancies to help rebuild the country post war. Upon moving to the UK, people from the Caribbean brought aspects from their culture with them. From food and fashion to music and media, the Jamaicans brought theses parts of their way of life to feel closer to home. This then began to catch on as English people grew to their taste so much so that they started to appropriate it. Graphic designer in the 1950s were typically cisgender men therefore as the rise of immigrants continued, as did the rise of racial violence in major cities and cultural appropriation. This is not to say that it was only cisgender men acting violent towards immigrants, but since racial segregation and discrimination laws were still implemented in both major countries, it meant that workers were unable to feel safe in said countries. Having said that, this could have influenced the amount of black people going into certain career paths, and how they struggled with social mobility.
Chapter Two:
Multiculturalism has allowed BAME designers in today’s design world to express themselves and to be able to work freely in the UK. The neverending message of inclusivity and diversity in multiculturalism is why there are more and more BAME designers going into the industry. To emphasis the importance of diversity in the workplace, there was a test conducted to show how diverse and inclusive some of the top graphic agencies are. See Appendix XXX. It is quite shocking to see that of the four major design firm, only nine of them were BAME employees. Of these nine, six were designers and the other three were in management or senior roles. In addition to that, there is a strong lack of female designers. It is quite disappointing that out of four agencies with a collection of approximately 40 designers between them only have nine BAME employees. This raises the question: where are all the BAME designers?
In an interview conducted by Abid Gangat (Media and Communications Manager at Design Council) given to Richie Manu, an author, designer and educator at Central Saint Martins – University of the Arts London; Gangat asked ‘It has been suggested that the design industry is full of middle class white men, is this your impression? If so, how do we go about changing that?’ (Gangat, 2016) to which Manu made some very strong points and brought in some deeply concerning figures. Firstly Manu mentioned how in 2015 there were only 11.4% of BAME designers in the UK which shows that there needs to be action to ‘achieve diversity in all areas in the design economy.’ (Manu, 2017). Manu continues to identify independent groups and platforms that have been doing prominent and active work to promote and increase social justice, diversity and equality. Not only do these groups increase diversity, but the provide platforms for exposure and growth for young designers to showcase their talent. Groups such as Diversity Matters and Shades of Noire were just a few that were mentioned. Shades of Noir is an online platform that was created in 2009 by Aisha Richards. It is an independent programme that supports a range of areas such as: curriculum design, social justice, cultural currency and knowledge that is accessible. With articles and blog style post, the information on Shades of Noir is clean, clear and direct.
Shades of Noir is not the only online platform that promotes and encourages diversity. The 28 Days of Black Designers project was designed to show the stories of 28 African-American and Black designers in the United States. Created by Tim Hykes, the project focuses on the lack of accomplishments being showcased from members of the black community. To change this, a 28 day project was put in place to raise awareness and celebrate black designers during the mouth of Black History. See Appendix XXX for the full list of all the designers. Appendix XXXX shows a wide range of different designers from different states. Out of the twenty-eight designers on this project, twelve women and men took part. Of that twelve, five are graphic designers, four of the women are UX/UI designers, four are educators/lecturers, two of them are illustrators and none of the women were creative directors. Whereas there were six male graphic designers, four men were UX/UI designers, three were illustrators and three male designers were art directors. Having projects and initiatives like promotes an optimistic message of change, development and growth for BAME designers in the industry. If projects like these were introduced not only in the United States but worldwide, it would raise awareness of the situation. Furthermore, the project is an innovative way to encourage young students for ethnic minorities to go into the creative industry.
Chapter Three:
Women on a whole are poorly represented in the creative industry. This is clearly proven in the methodology studies in Appendix XX and XX whereby there was a strong lack of females in major design firms such as Pentagram. Graphic Designers Surveyed commented on this in the question, ‘Are you male or female?’ to which 46% were female and 56% were male. Although the percentages are relatively close together, the percentage for females is still lower than males which shows the lack of female designs. Anoushka Khandwala, a graphic design student from Central Saint Martins, wrote an article posted by the Creative Review titled, ‘Why are There so few Women of Colour in Design?’ In this article, she commented on how a designers experiences and circumstances affects the outcome of their artwork. ‘The ability to communicate with this audience stems from the designer’s ability to understand them. If we don’t understand our audience, it is highly unlikely that our outcomes will be effective.’ (Khandwala, 2018). Khandwala mentions certain initiatives that shows the industry beginning to address the gender gap such as Women Who Draw (a directory for women illustrators) and Ladies Wine and Design (a meeting for female designers held monthly.) This is a start to making changes in the industry, but there are still a great deal to be done. In her article, she only mentioned three women of colour in the industry as she stated that ‘ the reason I have this list of role models memorised is because it is so short’ (Khandwala, 2018). One of them Resh Sidhu, Creative Director at Framestore, the other one is Rathna Ramanathan who is the head of the Visual Communications course at the Royal College of Art and lastly Jessica Antwi-Boasiako, leader of the New Blood Programme at D&AD.
For this chapter, the third wave of feminism could be used to describe the development of the gender gap in the industry. In the third wave, women from ethnic minorities started to realise that the movement did not cater to them after the second wave of feminism. Naomi Zach wrote the book Inclusive Feminism which explains this change which lead to her explaining how intersectionality caused divides in the movement which created segregations. ‘These ongoing segregations make it impossible for women to unite politically and they have not ended exclusion and discrimination among women.’ (Zack, 2009, pp.1)