DesignNotes: DesignNotes by Michael Surtees » Blog Archive »
Joe Clark
· 9 months ago
We’ve been through this already: Sitting on a board, judging a competitino, or whatever requires years of obsessive focus with no end in sight, and men on the whole have brains that are more suited to obsessive focus for years on end. Women, on the whole, have brains that resist putting all eggs in one basket, literally and figuratively.
This isn’t an old wives’ tale or some kind of ideology; it’s backed up by science. Read Susan Pinker’s The Sexual Paradox and come back and tell me you’re surprised that “leaders” of the design field are, on the whole, male. It is not related to male- or female-specific talent or sexist discrimination in the workplace.
michaelsurtees
· 9 months ago
I have to respectfully disagree with you Joe. My wife who's a much better designer than me is much more focused. I don't need a book to explain that.
Paulo Pereira
· 9 months ago
Thanks for the review, I was going back and forth about picking this book up. But maybe instead of buying it I'll read it while at Barnes & Noble drinking coffee some weekend.
It seems a lot of design books have the tendency of asking subjective questions. But then again graphic design is very subjective.
You brought up a good point about how they interviewed the designers through email - I like peoples first gut reactions to questions instead of doing interviews through email. People tend to give you a more sanitized version of their answer. I have done interviews through emails and didn't understand (or didn't like the person's answer) and called them up to clarify - their new clearer answers were always different from what they emailed me.
All Comments
This isn’t an old wives’ tale or some kind of ideology; it’s backed up by science. Read Susan Pinker’s The Sexual Paradox and come back and tell me you’re surprised that “leaders” of the design field are, on the whole, male. It is not related to male- or female-specific talent or sexist discrimination in the workplace.
It seems a lot of design books have the tendency of asking subjective questions. But then again graphic design is very subjective.
You brought up a good point about how they interviewed the designers through email - I like peoples first gut reactions to questions instead of doing interviews through email. People tend to give you a more sanitized version of their answer. I have done interviews through emails and didn't understand (or didn't like the person's answer) and called them up to clarify - their new clearer answers were always different from what they emailed me.
-P