Stereotypes are everywhere, even in the Design. For the second Time, will now be awarded in Cologne, the “Gender Design” Award. He chooses products that do not differ by gender. Why is that necessary?
“Gender-sensitive” should be the winners are already fixed since weeks. And so they acted for the Australian cosmetic manufacturer, “Aesop”, for example, whose Corporate Identity praised by the Jury because it “addressed to all people, regardless of gender and what cultural Backgrounds” they are.
What really stands out in “Aesop”: your skin, hair and body care products are in bottles, tubes or jars, which are confusingly similar. Black and white text fields inform each neutral on the content. The presentation in the brand’s shops and on the images of the Website follows a concentrated simple Aesthetics. The pink shampoo bottle with feminine curves, you’ll look in vain.
Look into a Shop cosmetics company Aesop
Will be awarded in Cologne the American women’s Initiative “A Women’s Thing”, a network of creative volunteers. For one, they operate and equip the site “awomensthing.org” dedicated to – as a companion Blog to the very different worlds of the woman of today. Entrepreneurs report as to how artists, scientists, or the operator of a sex shop for women.
An award for young people the project “notamuse finally gets”. With their new Website design to Silva tree, Claudia Scheer and Lea Sievertsen make the work of women designers more visible. Your dream: A more versatile design scene, “beyond the male hero figures”, as you write. The page “notamuse” was created in the framework of their joint master’s thesis and presents by means of in-depth Interviews women from the design area. For example, the “time magazine”-Art Director Jasmin Müller-Stoy, what success means to you, the art historian Gerda Breuer talks about her Motivation reveals, “writing Women in Graphic Design”, and designer Yvonne Rundio compares the network behavior of men and women.
“Gender-sensitive” it should be
“Gender sensitive,” Kaja Becker from the Cologne Gender-Design-Network, explains, “the Design and design that appeals to all genders without Stereotypes lift tires, or even sexist means.”
Becker design Professor. It operates the”beau bureau design” in Cologne and has a small son. With it, you don’t want in the “Pink-light blue-case of” fall, which lurks everywhere, since the industry has discovered how sales can increase by is men and women in separate audiences. This starts in the nursery: Pink plush toys for girls, blue art-toy for boys – “this is the opposite of gender is sensitive,” says Becker.
Exemplary Design: the US site A Women’s Thing
The Defenders of the industry deserves
Whether shower gels for men or pink battery-powered drills for women – also available in adult shops, much more and more often, men or woman thing. To generate “additional revenue, develop the company more and more individual, more specific products for special target groups,” says the Marketing Professor Marion Halfmann of the University of applied Sciences Rhein-Vaal in Kleve, “the hot Trend”. The tendency for People, of course, the segmentation of markets, products and services in both female and male consumers, already emerged in the 1990s in the United States, such as the German Institute for Marketing in Cologne, Germany, writes on his Website. Around the turn of the Millennium, the Trend spilled over to Europe. And today, Marketing is Gender-even in Germany.
“Women like softer shapes and pastelligere colors”, – quotes helped man the classic Marketing doctrine. That may be true, she doubts. “In the Design and marketing departments are men who say what women want to sit often.” This was reflected also in many of the products. However, research showed that women wanted, especially something Practical. “This is much underestimated and too often!”
Lego and the “pink software”
Who calls about the web site of the toy manufacturer Lego, the receive the perfectly styled pink-and-purple dream worlds of the product line, “Lego Friends”. Produced Lego for decades for guys, so the company has now taken seen the girl in the visor. “Gender Design and Gender-Marketing work is excellent,” notes the Hamburg-based Professor of gender research, Stevie Schmiedel, sarcastically. You criticized the separation of boys and girls in light blue and Pink worlds as “pink software”, the legendary children’s early problematic role of images: “women learn that they are considered to be loud and bitchy when you claim your space, in the case of men the positive.”
The design of the network Notamuse receives the “Iphigenia Gender Design Award”
Schmiedel has founded six years ago – after the British model – the Initiative”Pinkstinks”, the fights against sexism in advertising and Marketing. It is contrary to the Gender-Marketing-expert Marion Halfmann, herself a mother of two children: “A product does not necessarily lead to that I am reduced to my role as a woman.” It is how you deal with it. In the case of children, so the man helped it is certainly important to guide you on your way in the consumer world.
Courage instead of lemon
How is it that today, on Transgender will be discussed and the society falls at the same time, in light blue-Pink-worlds? “The society has become extreme,” believes the former Cologne-based Design Professor Uta Brandes. She is the founder and Chairman of the international Gender Design Network. In Germany, it has identified a strong, hate-filled Anti-Gender movement, which will also be promoted by the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD). The Iphigenia Gender Design Award, the you gives on Thursday (8.11.2018) in the Cologne Museum of Applied art, good ideas: “I could name right off the bat 10.000 sexist product advertising, and products”, says the Gender-Design-expert, “that is why we awarded the lemon, but the courage to do Better.”