Designers Have an Important Responsibility
In April 2014, Mic’s senior editor Elizabeth Plank wrote a powerful article calling out Suit Supply, a Dutch fashion company for men, for their sexist summer ad campaign. The ad featured a man front and center, wearing a suit from its latest line. In the background, a dozen women danced and jumped around him. In the uncensored version of the ad, the women were topless.
The idea of belittling and exploiting women’s bodies to sell products is not at all uncommon in media, and especially in advertising. Last April, a Buzzfeed quiz called “Can You Guess What These Sexist Adverts Are Trying To Sell?” exposed the absurd amount of sexualization of women’s bodies in advertising. Female objectification has become the norm in marketing across genres: entertainment, fashion, beauty — even electronics and automobiles.
This degrading imagery offers an easy fallback for designers who want to make an effective mockup. As designers, we build on past successes by incorporating a modern take and our own style. The question becomes: Did those past successes really work for the right reasons? Should we continue to put our head down and avoid addressing these issues? Should we continue producing visual content without criticizing our work from a sexual, racial and cultural standpoint?
What does all of this have to do with design?
As designers, we carry a huge responsibility on our shoulders. We create images that go out for the world to see, whether in the form of a 250px wide ad on a website or a printed billboard on a highway. However, we often overlook sexism, racism, and gender identities when we create our work. We use all of our energy focusing on crucial design elements and criteria: colors, contrast and movement. We spend a lot of time making sure our work is lively, exciting, eye-catching and provoking. But what’s the point of having visually interesting design if it doesn’t contribute anything to the world? What’s the point if we don’t use our platform to create real change? The need for awareness and social context becomes more and more acute, because there is a need to make things better. And we can do better.
Making things better starts with concepts and sketches on our drawing boards. As people who create the face of media, we need to carefully consider the visual elements that we put in the world. As we draw inspiration and references, it is important to identify if our creative process, and therefore our outcome, is problematic. When I was creating a Nicki Minaj banner for Mic referencing her beef with Miley Cyrus at the 2015 VMAs, a suggestion to pick an “angrier” photo of Minaj came up. I spoke to Mic’s Identities Editor, Michelle Garcia, about my concerns over this suggestion. While the angrier photo would draw more attention to the design, it would be unethical to “capitalize on a moment that, for her, was quite empowering,” to quote Michelle.
Is it okay to play the Angry Black Woman card for a cheap punchline? Is it okay to have naked women in the background of a shampoo ad? Are we enforcing or fighting stereotypes? The more questions we ask ourselves as we develop our work, the closer we can get to tackling sexism, racism and diversity problems in the media.
Mic isn’t just any media company. We’re a group of smart, informed and sensitive people who strive to fight for equality among the sexes, races, genders, sexual orientations and gender identities. We stand by the underdogs. We give them a voice and we commit to inform our generation on the most important issues. Even though we on the Product team don’t write opinion pieces, we should have the same principles and integrity, and hold ourselves just as accountable for the work that we create.
