Spawned by recent conversations with friends, I’ve been thinking about people who are known for designing and working with web standards. Specifically those who have a strong interest in CSS or are already using style sheets to compliment or construct beautiful design. In these conversations, we’ve noted that this space seems heavily dominated by men. This concerns me.
All of my art/design-focused life, I’ve competed with and been taught by numerous women. Throughout all of junior high and high school, my art classes were marked by fierce competition with the same three girls. We pushed and stretched each other’s abilities through friendly competition, encouragement, and critique. In college, two of my three design instructors were women, for whom, to this day, I still have an immense amount of respect. The design department seemed well balanced between male and female students. In companies where I’ve worked, the gender mix of designers has been roughly equivalent. One of the most amazing Creative Directors I’ve ever worked under was a woman. There’s no doubt that women have played a significant role as influences in how I work and create as a designer.
However, when I survey the current field of standards-based web design, I see mostly male names. Not enough female names. It feels too much like a boys club. Just look at the list of sites I frequent on my front page. Aside from Heather’s site (slanted toward really cool photography), and Webgraphics (which, I think, has 1 female author out of 28), my list is comprised of sites all run by men. I’m positive that there are more women out there making waves in design and grappling with and writing about the same CSS issues I deal with on a regular basis. But they’re not as well known for some reason. I realize I can’t necessarily change that, or immediately equalize the awareness of notable women in our industry. But I’d certainly like to be more aware of the female players around me (and you).
I have a few names that come to mind. But unfortunately, not very many. And I’m really trying. I’d like to leave the call wide open. Do you know women in this field who you consider inspiring leaders, thoughtful innovators, or talented designers? Female friends you know? Sites you visit? Designers you admire? And if you, dear reader, happen to be one of the very women I’m seeking, please feel no shame or intimidation in giving yourself a plug.
I don’t care if her/your design style would be deemed “feminine” or not — that distinction is not what I’m after. I’d just like to try to find a little more balance in the field surrounding me. Increasing awareness of what women are doing and creating can only serve to raise the bar for design and broaden my perspective. Who and where are they?
Update: (Sunday 7:00pm) I’ve closed off the comments for this entry early — after only two weekend days. Mostly, it’s because I want to keep a good thing good, while it still is. There are lots of great pointers to names and sites contained within. I’m sure lots more could be added if I left the comments open. It’s a tough decision to close them off now since many of you might not see this entry until Monday morning. But in my observations, the longer a thread is left open, the more it starts to stray off-topic and becomes unmanageable. I’d prefer to keep these recommendations/plugs untainted and free of debate or speculation. Afterall, the questions were Who and Where. And I now have more than I asked for. It was a potentially sensitive and delicate issue. Those who responded handled it with grace. Thank you.
48 comments (Comments closed)
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I think I’m very lucky in that I’ve got a girlfriend who is studying Computer Science and wants to get into Standards-compliant web development. She’s the only girl I know who cares about such things to such an extent. I know a few female webmasters of forum sites, but only one of them has (so far) shown any interest in XHTML/CSS.
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I was wondering the same thing less than three hours ago. Spooky…
But at 3.12 am, I am not prepared to analyze the reasons :)
I’d just like to mention Firda Beka as one example of a very talented female designer.
Good night everyone.
I’m a girl. I’m just now getting into CSS-based and standards-based design. I have been doing amateur web design for several years now, and am just now starting to get some paying jobs. I had been using CSS to style text for the past year or so, but just recently became aware of the power of CSS for layout and the benefits of using it. I got interested, got more knowledgeable about it, and now all the new pages I’m working on are XTML and CSS (with redesigns of some of my old sites on the way). I am still in the stage where it takes me longer than it should to troubleshoot my layouts, but that has been a learning experience.
Anyway as soon as I have a lock on it so that I can toss Dreamweaver and Photoshop and code in BBedit exclusively ;) I will try to carve out my niche in the CSS/XHTML/standards world.
I really like reading maki itoh’s blog, which I think also has a nice clean design. She’s also started up a food blog which has excellent content and looks good. On the whole question of “feminine” style, I think that’s a highly dubios distinction. See this post from Maki and this post from burningbird (another nice looking weblog).
I’ve heard the same thoughts voiced about women and technology in general, that they’re rather under-represented. The conclusion at that time was that women are under-represented in many fields.
I’ve been wondering the same thing though, and it took until Zen Garden design #20 to have a single female name in there. Then I got three in a row. That was a good week.
#20 - Friendly Beaches - Sophie G.
#21 - Calm & Smooth - Cornelia Lange
#22 - Viridity - Laura MacArthur
#33 - Fleur-de-Lys - Claire Campbell
#34 - ZenGrounds - Andrea Piernock
#40 - The Question Why - Diane Clayton
#50 - First Summary - Cornelia Lange
#51 - Commercial Drive - Wendy Foster
#54 - Gecko’s Eye - Sandra Greco
…and let’s none of us forget the inimitable Molly Holzschlag.
Don’t forget Shirley Kaiser, Carrie Bickner, Meryl Evans, and Molly (already mentioned). That’s off the top of my head.
A few names come to mind:
Anitra Pavka
Heather Hesketh
Makiko Itoh
Meryl K. Evans
Molly E. Holzschlag
Shirley E. Kaiser
Maybe it has less to do with the gender ratio and more to do with the male ego, maybe “we” (myself included gents) as a gender are the only one’s whom feel the need to self promote our accomplishments via a blog or other ego masturbatory™ means. Just playing the devils advocate here because I don’t really have an answer, the majority of Art Directors I know are women, yet the number of programmers I know are men and I figure web developers/designers are a mix of the two, yet at conferences it is mostly men that I see attending… I don’t know.
They’re more on the programming side than on the design side, but I get good info (largely concerning PHP and Movable Type) from Scriptygoddess and the girlie matters.
Well, like in lots of areas, maybe the femme fatales are not as keen on taking the high profile line as some of us blokes. :)
I would like to include the very nice B2 blog Gurujuice as a nice effort from Helen
Cheers
John
Via Derek, I just found Brookelyn.org, created by Brooke Gwen S. (nothing to do with Brooklyn, NY).
Beautiful, nicely designed, innovative, mixed with cool photography, powered by MT, valid XHTML, and very CSS-aware. For those wondering, Brooke is precisely the type of female designer I wanted to discover and become aware of by writing this entry.
Nice list going so far. But I really want to see a lot more. I know they’re out there.
One name I don’t see mentioned is Holly Bergevin.
This is a question I have pondered a lot during the years I was ‘cutting-code’, given that there has been so few women in computer science.
Personally, I don’t feel the gender bias is as serious in the field of Web standards-compliance. We have a host of female names in the WaSP, and the intensive research team in MACCAWS is all-female.
When you “survey the current field of standards design” - how are you doing so? Are you only looking at Web sites which actively talk about standards compliance and design? If that is the case, then there are two limitations - you are probably looking at English-only sites and you are assuming that women will also write about Web standards.
I almost never talk about Web standards on my personal blog - why? Because it’s not the place for it. On the same token, I spend many hours a week behind the scenes doing Web standards-related work :)
Just because some of us are not center-stage type, does not mean we don’t exist :)
Cheers.
hmmmm not completely related but still a bit.
The computing world is mostly male. All the web agencies I have worked were having male artistic directors too.
So if you want to make you count exact for Web standards CSS design. you have to see if the proportion is the same, less or higher. For example if the computing world is 80% M / 20% F, in web standards do you have the same ? And if it comes to be 70 % M / 30% F in this specific area so you have more women, not enough but still.
On a side aspect, at W3C in the Team itself.
* Wendy Chislholm is in charge of WCAG WG. The WG has a lot of women participating.
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/participants.html
I can count 15 women.
* Judy Brewer is the leader for the WAI domain, which is responsible for all accessibility stuff at W3C.
* In the QA WG, you have 5 men and 3 women, that I’m in charge.
And all other anonymous persons working everywhere.
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Exactly Steph. Remember? I’m the one who thinks more do exist. They just don’t seem to be linked to as much, thus they’re not as visible.
And no, I don’t care if they talk about standards or not. But I am interested in the designers who are aware of, and using standards to create and publish gorgeous design on the Web — whether or not they choose to write anything about them. Or even whether they actively write on a regular basis. They may not write at all. The site(s) they design may not even be their own personal site — they may work for a larger company or organization. That’s fine. And nationality doesn’t matter either.
Please note: I’d like to somehow bring the discussion back on topic. I’m looking for names and [links to] sites, not ideas of why you think this situation exists (or doesn’t exist). And I’m specifically looking for names of female standards-aware designers, not just names within the web standards crowd. It may be a blurry, subjective line, but it’s important to make the distinction. Think designs and designers that make you go “Wow, I wish I could create sites that beautiful…” (whether you can or not)
like steph, i don’t really write about CSS/markup/whatis on my personal blog because…it’s my personal blog and i’d rather write about other stuff. i have sort of been thinking about reviving my CSS/markup/JavaScript/whatis writing (you can see some of my ancient writings on Nick’s site among other places) on my book site…though it’s sort of on the backburner at the moment.
For influential women in web design, besides Shirley, Molly, Meryl and others already mentioned, don’t forget Carole Guevin has been has been doing it for a long time. And you could argue that the most influential designer in the blogosphere is Mena Trott via the Movable Type and Typepad default templates.
Thank you Makiko. In addition to yourself, I was hoping Carole and Mena would get mentioned by someone, however obvious. For anyone who may not be familiar, Mena is maintaining her current weblog here, her pre-TypePad MT weblog sits (currently abandoned) at dollarshort.org, and Six Apart, makers of Movable Type, is the company she and her husband, Ben, founded.
Right on track so ;)
Names… what’s the interest? :p Web design is cool women or men do not matter.
Actually, webgraphics just signed on another female author :)
check out http://www.netdiver.net - it has a girl only section and has loads of the best designer ladies
I’ve been doing CSS-based design for longer than any of the friends I talk to online. :) When they have questions about design/html/css, they come to me. :) You are welcome to check out kadyellebee, my journal, and blogstyles, my business site.
A few other women (along with many of the ones mentioned already here) pop out in my mind with a creative standards design technique:
Dawn of Chicago Uncommon. Her personal blog was the first to make me take notice of a minimalist design.
Amy of Domesticat. Her skinning tutorial has helped a lot of people to make beautiful things.
Dori of Backup Brain. She stands out for her Javascript books, and her leadership in Wise-Women.
Reb of Nathair - her designs (and photos) inspire me.
Jennifer of forty.something.
ScriptyGoddess and Girlie Matters were mentioned - the virtualvenus site is also kinda in that category… I love how that design turned out (its one of mine!)
I have a feeling I’m leaving some out that I’d love to mention, but this is already long. :) Enjoy the links!
I am female. I started designing websites for free when I was thirteen, and I remember that even then, I hated using tables to set up pages - it always took so long to change the page layout! I managed to parlay this hobby into a paying job at my high school, and am currently not-so-secretly working on an XHTML (1.0 Strict!)/CSS redesign of my high school’s website. Still under construction, but you can see parts of it here - San Diego High.
I’m only an “inspiring leader” to SDHS’s IT department. A “thoughtful innovator”? No more so than anyone else creating XHTML/CSS-based websites. And modesty forbids me claiming to be a “talented designer” (besides, Photoshop and I have a love/hate relationship). But web design is something that I am unlikely to ever give up, so who knows - maybe someday I’ll meet Doug’s qualifications.
Since I’m pseudonymous, I guess you’ll have to take my word for it that I’m female. I’m not a full-timer, but I am responsible for three years of fortnightly columns, CSS support charts, Mac IE bug resources and a bunch of other things besides.
Past articles and CSS resources.
Cheers,
CB
I’ve been mentioned by Dave S already.. but to introduce myself properly
I’ve been coding mainly for other people for a few years now. My own site, relatively new, is a cross between my hobby and my work
IT Enquirer is a site I recently completed a CSS makeover on, based on the authors original design it encompasses four different templates into one stylesheet.
I love this business and it’s hard to seperate the work from the hobby sometimes ;)
It’s where graphic design and CSS methods meet that is of interest here, isn’t it? But someone could be good at, or interested in, the first but not the second, or vice versa.
As a rule, though obviously not in every case, men tend to have a greater interest in what sytematizes and categorizes. (But this is exactly what CSS does.)
People can even be interested in train timetables - but I think there are few female trainspotters. And, in the extreme, autism, where there is a narrow focus on systems and a lack of social and emotional awareness, is more prevalent in males. (See Robert Winston _The Human Mind_, BBC, 2003.)
So if more men than women write about CSS, I don’t think it argues that there is any sinister conspiracy of men. It’s just that women’s interests are _less_ likely to go in that way. But of course some women will understand it far better than some men will.
Hey Doug, my question then is - why a list? There are women who do good work out there, but the importance here is that they are designers who do good work, not women who do good work. Gender should never matter in a profession - whether you are a man or a woman or other, you are a designer, and therefore gender should never be an emphasis.
If the question you are asking is really a problem, I think you would have found that it has been asked on a woman designer’s blog a long long time ago.
A couple of terrific female designers to add to your list:
Lisa of Burnt Toast
and
Kristin of Media Tinker
in addition to many other women listed on my blog.
Steph makes a very good point. Nevertheless I have discovered some brilliant sites I didn’t know about before and that’s been cool and inspirational too.
Emma’s going to think I’m stalking her since I just nominated her for a blog award at another site, but she’s a great designer too.
To answer Steph’s question, since it’s hanging out there, I’ll respond as if this is an extension of the original entry.
Of course gender never matters when evaluating a designer’s skill set — a designer can stand on the merits of talent, craftsmanship, and creativity alone, without sex, race, nationality, religion or any other extraneous factors needing to come into play. This entry was/is not intended to be a rally cry to women, nor anything about equal rights or adequate representation. It stems more from curiosity and personal interest.
I noted that many creative influences in my personal life have been women. They’ve added a balance to my view and understanding of design that I just feel I’m missing right now. So I’m simply curious to find more of them who share an interest and are doing what I currently do.
When asked for references to standards-aware designers and the sites they’ve designed, I found it odd that 90% of those I could think of were male-driven. It didn’t seem to be an accurate picture of my industry. Maybe it’s just me, and I’ve probably been looking in all the wrong places. I, personally, would like to be more aware of women designers who are doing similar things. That’s it. That’s where I thought others could help.
I’m tremendously appreciative of the referrals made so far — it’s opening my eyes to some designers and sites I may never have found otherwise.
Funny, I’ve already been reading some of the sites mentioned here and I never seemed to have made the point of remembering that these sites are made by women. I mean it’s not the first thing that comes to mind, the quality of the content and or the look and feel of a site is what makes me come back. Like Doug already mentioned individually gender doesn’t necessarily matter when it comes to skill and ability and when a blog covers design and webstandards the gender issue is then often mute.
But some of the best work that has come out of the teams that I’ve worked with has been those teams that had both men and women working together. All male teams seemed to me to be just that little bit more boring and uncreative. Remembering this made me think that maybe I should be more aware about the person behind the blog, it can’t hurt. If my daily reads are more balanced my day may become just that little bit more fun and creative.
Dooce!!!!!
Funniest writer (and person) on the web, hands down! Heather’s life and background is so interesting, it would be worthwhile for someone not familiar with her to read her blog archives from the beginning one weekend :)
I want to put a plug in for misbehaving.net a weblog about women and technology.
I’d like to add the girls of Blogmoxie to the list, as well as Erika, of Snazzykat and Jennifer of The Working Mom. I find their designs awe-inspiring and only wish I could have even half their talent.
Well, now we know of a lot more female web designers… :-)
I think part of the problem is the reaction females generally get online. I’ve seen people get mobbed with posts like “omg show me the b00biez” when it’s mentioned that they’re a woman - I’d imagine that’s off-putting.
(Slashdot’s a good place to see that kind of thing)
For them, it’s probably easier to just let everyone think you’re a guy and be judged based on your work.
i am shocked that nobody has mentioned Jen from PIXELDECOR. Her sites totally rock.
i am also of the cult of ScriptyGoddess and Kaydeellebee.
i want to add [the girlie matters] because even though her site does not come across as visually design-y, her tech expertise puts her on a whole ‘nother level of the blogosphere.
i’ve come to standards design late in the game. i a writer who turned to DTP and eventually to web design as a way to complement my primary job. i’ve been producing personal and net art sites part-time since 1997: photoshop was 1.0 and when DW came out, we bought it for less than a hundred bucks. of course, i thought it was the best thing since sliced bread because as someone coming out of desk top publishing, DW made sense. until, that is, i started developing commercial sites. i created a site for a museum project that took me to the brink of insanity.
that’s why blogging has made me a true believer. i really think that CMS technology is the biggest innovation on the web since Mosaic and the more ubiquitous blogs become (what with Typepad, for example) the more standards site we’ll see out there.
that said, i have three sites:
culturekitchen
typepadistas
blogundanga
i have am a web standards evangelizer of sorts for the TypePad community through TypePadistas. in my search for TP sites of note, i have found many beautiful blogs designed by women that i am sure, just like me, have never thought of themselves as web designers.
on a last note: doesn’t anybody think of Mena Trott as a web designer? Her sites are truly beautiful and am sure she is reponsible in more ways than one for the blog ‘aesthetic’.
A shameless plug for my new site doingfine.
I work in academia and have been designing with web standards for several years now. My main contribution to the community is training the next generation of web designers, and making sure they learn good habits right off the bat. I train a team of students in CSS, web standards, and accessibility techniques.
Someone, create an OPML document, or sometype of list, of all these URLs. That would be very useful.
Only thing I’ll say - we have two women in our web applications division. In fact, they are the web apps division. Two young, smart ladies just almost out of college. I do work with them in a daily basis, and I must confess it is much easier than with men - at least to my easily burnable temper. It is the first time I work on a company where the male/female ratio goes up beyond the help desk, something I really like to live with. The less web development gets looked at like a “guy’s thing”, the more great talent we can come to discover from the opposite sex and the less alien will the sex difference be - which can only be a good thing.
I am female and built both my sites (erinmalone.com and emdezine.com/designwritingd) using CSS, attempting to be standards compliant. While Boxes and Arrows isn’t built with CSS, it is run by women, myself (erin malone - chief editor) and Christina Wodtke (publisher). There are many women out here, we just dont always let people know what our gender is because it should be irrelevant.
Well, most of the women designers I’ve noticed have already been mentioned. The only other one I can think of who regularly blows me away w/her designs is Retro Stockings she has thumbnails of previous designs that are just amazing, really.
Myself, I’ve been using CSS for a few years now, but have only very recently become interested in standards-based designing. I actually have a separate blogroll devoted to design sites that either inform or inspire me. My designs are probably too “frou-frou” though, heh. I don’t consider myself talented…yet! ;)
Well, when you shrink the sample by thinking in terms of “people who are known for designing and working with web standards” and “current field of standards-based web design”, it seems you’re only looking for professionals working for business and industry… yet many of the creative layouts and beautiful designs I’ve seen online have been lovingly crafted by what you’d probably consider ‘amateurs’: maybe high-school girls on their personal weblogs, or women making a site for some personal interest? That’s possibly where many of them are, putting their effort into the personal zone instead of the corporate.
Hi. Woman here. I also do a lot of CSS and XHTML based design these days. Most of the ones I’ve done (so far) aren’t live on the web yet (redesigns are a bitch, eh?), and some I can’t show here because they are internal websites for only the company and its dealers. Some of them are transitional. Some of them rely on no tables and just XHTML Strict and CSS design. :D
Tho you can take a peek at my weblog (tho it was coded a year ago, so mind some of the messiness). I use CSS and XHTML 1.0 Trans on my sister’s weblog: http://ana.lealea.net/
And I’ve seen a lot of women with blogs who prefer doing their designs through CSS and XHTML. Funnily enough, I’m more of the CSS fanatic than my boyfriend is, but I’m slowly turning his head. ;-D Results and facts speak for themselves.
P.S. I consider myself more of a designer than a “coder.” That’s what my education was, anyway. And I consider CSS and XHTML actually a nice way to marry beautiful layouts with practical, accessible websites. :D
My brief portfolio site, unfortunately, is still done archaicly (it was hastily done during portfolio grad show and while I was finishing a hectic freelance project) without XHTML or well done CSS. So please excuse! *bows*
And I consider CSS and XHTML actually a nice way to marry beautiful layouts with practical, accessible websites. :D
Great quote! I love it!
And, as I remember right, the vast majority of the Boxes and Arrows staff/editors are women.
I feel a little bit embarrassed about raising my hand, since my personal website isn’t at all CSS/XHTML standards compliant — I’m somewhat new to the issue, but rather passionate about it and am constantly learning more. I haven’t gotten around to recoding my own site yet, but I have been using XHTML/CSS as much as possible at work (I’m the web-design department). Most of my tableless sites are still in progress. I’m also working on redesigning my roommates blog to be completely tableless CSS/XHTML, but that probably won’t be released to the public until the end of the year… I’ll be submitting that one to the CSS Vault when it is. :)
I find my work enivronment is very unusual. It’s a small internet software company, with a pretty even mix of males and females. Actually, it used to be prodominately female, but the company has been expanding lately and taking in more employees. The CTO is a man, but he doesn’t do any programming. His wife (and co-owner) is a genius programmer who went to college at the age of 14 and has so much work coming her way that she barely ever sleeps. She works 7 days a week. The second highest programmer is also female. The two new programmers are male, but still manage to be brilliant. ;) I’m in charge of the web design “department” which is me and my male intern. I don’t really think my company reflects the norm of the industry. I have also slowly moved from a specific interest in web design into a heady mix of programming. I will soon be returning to college for a Bachelors in Web Development or Information Technology.
Now to stop tooting my own horn, since someone already mentioned netdiver, here’s some more…
-Melanie Groux of brushstroke.tv is inspirational
-Anna Dorfman of absolutely vile recently recoded her site in CSS.
-Sushiesque.com may be part template, but I’ve seen her previous work and know she knows all about great design.
-Danica of Applepear does amazing things with CSS
-Jody Ferry is a webdesigner with a CSS portfolio site
-My friend, Persephone, does a good job coding her site in CSS and offering various CSS skins…
-Lori at Apparently Nothing is great with minimalism
-The Ugly Green Chair is clean and gorgeous
…and others that have already been named.
I’ll try to keep my eyes open for more to add later.
“Just because some of us are not center-stage type, does not mean we don’t exist :)” - noted Steph
I have to agree with Steph. I am a freelance web designer, writer, and photographer. Whild I do go to SXSW and I read/view/follow the sites of many innovators, but I am quite happy to be apart of the chorus. In my own work I am interested in good web standards design, but I am more interested in creating content and encouraging others to create content, thus I have not been actively involved in the larger design community.
I haven’t contributed often over the years to the general knowledge base writing articles, but instead I work one-on-one with people on bulletin boards and directly face-to-face. This isn’t glamourous, nor name-building work, but I believe it gives back to the community in other, less-tangible, ways.
I also to a lot of ghost coding for other designers, which I find challenging. About 75% of my business is “sub-contracting”.
Writing ground-breaking and influential articles would be fun, but at the moment running my business successfully and raising my family take precedence.
Note: I’ve decided to close off the comments for this entry early. Please read the update at the end of the original entry text above for an explanation.
Thanks to all who contributed.
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