Design Like a Woman

One milestone from future vision to present, in the period immediately following my redundancy, was to edit the book I wrote for my Master of Science in Strategic Design. This book is the foundation to all that you see here. It set out the manifesto and method for what is now Wild Flowers Wild Futures, and eventually, I’ll be publishing some of the material here.

In editing the book, which had lain untouched for a year, in Dropbox, not even printed out, I came across the small ‘chapter’ I wrote on Feminist Design. Going through the somewhat familiar text I could sense that I had reached an energy block during the writing of this piece as it lacked the punch and zestiness of some of the rest of the tome. Even one year on I was hard pushed to find the energy to improve the work, and instead questioned whether it even ‘needed’ to be in the book.

I think I wrote something along the lines of ‘this is a nice to have but is not necessary for overall success in the coaching program’. I wrote this not because I fully believed it, but because I wanted to excuse my recalcitrance at refusing to improve the piece. But also there was definitely some unconscious bias that the content about women designing was sort of ‘less than’. I had of course given plentiful pages to the design theory part of the book which was focused on two male thinkers.

Now, being unemployed and having the space to be more curious about my thoughts, and engage intellectually with things, I pondered a moment on what was going on. I knew it was just wrong to dismiss feminist design as some kind of accessory piece to the Wild Flowers Wild Futures offering, so as I often said in my corporate career when we hit road blocks or inspiration deserts: Go back to the evidence. I re-read the books that had guided my thinking on feminist design, and as I read, I began to realise that where I’d gone wrong was to focus too much on feminism, and what was ‘wrong’ with the designed world which ‘othered’ women, so huge and important as to be unwieldy for a non academic to handle. In effect I had gotten in too deep, when I wanted to remain light. Conversely, I had not focused enough on celebrating the unique characteristics of design done in a female way, which arguably is a much more joyful starting point for a brand that is all about the joy of designing your wild and wonderful future.

So as I often do, I worked on ‘reframing’ my approach or focus. The result was a celebration of ways in which women design (and even this is apparently controversial for some, and please, on this note, I am as a woman, happy with where I have gotten to with this and I do not want to get into gendered constructs).

I got (good) shivers down my spine when I begun this reframing; I realised that ‘Design Like a Woman’ as I renamed it, could take up space and be a central pillar to our coaching and Garden Parties. It would make both offerings much more female centric, it would be celebratory, and it would open up a ton of new ways of expressing our ideas by re-purposing often devalued ‘female’ forms of creative expression, as the main showcase for ideas about the future, and encouraging long treasured ‘female’ ways of doing design (behaviors) as the backbone of how we work both one-on-one and in our parties.

Here’s a succinct run down of where we stand on Design Like a Woman.

And without this book, I would never have gotten a grip on any of it at all: Alison Place: Feminist Designer.

Design Like a Woman Manifesto:

The designed world is largely male driven, and women are designed for as an afterthought or not at all.

Design that is celebrated and awarded, or considered ‘iconic’ is often that done by men.

Women have centuries of history of producing and making, decorating and service design; and yet often because these design activities originally happened in the home, or for the domestic side of life, they are not considered design, and do not enjoy visibility. Think embroidery; floral design; ceramics; meal preparation; quilt making; room design; clothes making; homeschooling; gardening; remedy design etc.

Female design behaviors are unique and can be characterised by the following traits: collaboration; emotional and personal dimensions are included in the design and are therefore made visible; fragmented; meaning done in small snatches of time, in between caring for other humans; messy in a glorious way: think curves and mashup rather than straight lines and perfection; designing with what they have around them; designing to improve the lives of people close to them; making, producing, small scale and local. Lastly, they design best in comforting, supportive environments.

Across our Garden Parties and one-on-one coaching we celebrate everything listed out above. You’ll find quilting squares and embroidery hoops in our design kit; we use floral design and gardening in our team building; and we do everything in comforting, supportive environments whether online, at the Garden Concept, or at a space of your choosing. Plus, we make everything we do visible: you take home your work from our parties, and you share your work on your Futures Canvas in one-on-one coaching.

Designing Like a Woman provided us with the ‘how’ and core ‘behaviors’ of Wild Flowers Wild Futures.
We had the methods and prompts (many of which arguably authored by men), and yet Design Like a Woman is how we go about the work, and how we showcase our thinking. A perfect balance.