Queer in the Design Industry
The Value of LGBTQ+ Professional Community
Earlier this month, I had the amazing experience of talking at Queer X Design, an event co-sponsored by Queer Design Club and newly formed collective Ubiety. Hosted by All Turtles, it was a lively discussion among folks working at the intersection of queer identity and design practice.
Micah Rivera gave a heart-felt and instructive look at his work queering the branding for Spot; and panelists Ana Arriola, Rachel Berger, Stuart Getty, Neil Torrefiel, and Dara Sklar talked with moderator Matthew Yazzie about everything from decolonizing design education to Taylor Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down” music video.
I took the opportunity to talk about Queer Design Club—because, obviously—and dive into why professional organizations that acknowledge the whole individual matter.
When Becks and I set out to create Queer Design Club, we wanted to not only increase the visibility of LGBTQ+ designers past and present, we also wanted to create a professional space where queer designers can been seen—and celebrated—as their full selves.
I was curious about who is queer and making cool shit. But not only that: what design work that has already shaped the industry was created by queer people whose identities haven’t been acknowledged? And what design work has the world been deprived of because its creators were queer in contexts where that prevented their professional participation?
Visibility matters. As Marian Wright Edelman said simply, “You can’t be what you can’t see.” Queer people’s work isn’t being adequately recognized.
We know from the Human Rights Campaign’s workplace studies that almost half of queer Americans are closeted at work. They’re afraid of alienating coworkers, harassment, and losing their jobs. They spend precious psychic energy hiding whole parts of themselves from their professional peers. Not surprisingly, almost a third of queer workers report feeling unhappy or depressed as a result of their job.
Not having visible role models of successful queer people in their company or field only makes matters worse.
This is an issue even in design, a field that ranks diversity and inclusion as one of the most critical challenges it faces, according to the 2017 AIGA Design Census.¹ The Queer X Design event was organized in response to the AIGA hosting the 2019 SF Design Week during Global Pride without planning a single event targeted to LGBTQ+ designers.²
Queer professionals are used to companies turning up at Pride and forgetting them when the party’s over, but this lack of LGBTQ+ programming would be unacceptable even if Design Week wasn’t during Pride.
In the same AIGA Design Census that lists diversity & inclusion as a top issue, 11.7% of designers identified as LGBTQ+.³ That’s compared to 4.5% of the general population according to Gallup’s most recent estimates. What does it say about queer inclusion in design when our most prominent professional association’s own data suggest we are disproportionately represented in the field and they don’t represent us in their programming?
While the number of LGBTQ+ respondents to the Design Census is not large enough to be considered statistically representative, their responses speak to the individual experiences many Queer Design Club’s members have shared.
For example, queer designers are not staying in the industry as long as their peers. Respondents who were LGBTQ+ were more likely to have been in the industry for less than 5 years; and as we look to more seasoned designers, we see less LGBTQ+ queer representation.
What about queer people’s experiences during those first 5–10 years is causing them to leave the industry? Well, they tend to be paid less. The disparity in seniority may contribute to this, but if you look at responses by years in the field, LGBTQ+ designers start their careers earning less.
This may be in part because they are less likely to be employed full-time. Queer designers may also be paid less because they are less likely to enter the field with formal education. In fact, this may be one of the reasons why queer people come to design in such high numbers. It’s still possible to get started in the field without the financial resources required for higher education—an important career factor for people whose families may refuse to offer material support. Unfortunately, once drawn to design, queer designers—met by combined biases against minorities and non-traditional career paths—may feel less valued. Their earnings seem to back that feeling up.
At around 5–10 years, incomes start leveling out, but by then it’s too late. The industry will have already lost queer talent.
It’s no shock then that queer designers are more likely than their straight peers to report feeling unstable at work and less likely to feel “fairly stable” or “rock solid.”
If you dig into the data by respondents’ race/ethnicity or gender, you’ll see even further disparities. Queer men earn more than queer women and non-binary people. Queer white people earn more than queer people of color. The way AIGA collected the data doesn’t let us compare cis to trans respondents, but I suspect we would see similar trends.
As always, the most secure identity to be born into is a straight, white, cisgender man. If you’re a queer designer, though, it looks like the industry is not serving you to the best of its ability.
However, I am heartened by the Queer community’s long history of making space for itself and helping lift each other up. I believe we have an opportunity to do that now in our profession, and Queer Design Club is committed to making it happen.
As a community, we can lift each other up with advice and support. We can encourage our employers to hire more queer talent and industry events and publications to amplify queer voices. Together, we can build up more queer leaders in our industry who can inspire and mentor the LGTBQ+ designers who will lead tomorrow.
We can help the design industry see a broader spectrum of talent. We just have to keep designing and shining.
A couple quick notes
- Overall, respondents to the 2017 AIGA Design Census listed diversity and inclusion as the #2 most critical issue facing the industry. If you filter out white designers’ answers, it’s #1. Go figure.
- Queer X Design panelist Ana Arriola, who was also an advisor to Design Week, noticed this lack of programming and organized an intersectional panel of craftswomxn, which included queer people. As important as this event was — and as amazing as Ana is for making it happen — it was not queer-specific and does not address the inclusion of queer people who do not identify as craftswomxn. But no single event could ever adequately represent the queer community at Design Week.
- All members of the queer community are grouped here because LGBTQ+ identity was collected as a yes or no question with no further sub-identification. And while there was an option to identify as non-binary in the gender field, there was no way for respondents who identified as men or women to share whether they were trans.
