Fantastic Design Matters conversation with designer and educator Louise Sandhaus, author of Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California and Graphic Design 1936–1986:
When I first came to California, in 1990, I was sure I had landed in some kind of promised land. I had just left a wintertime Boston, fresh from postmodernist and feminist studies and with substantial experience as a graphic designer (first for a small magazine, then a corporate studio). In contrast to Beantown, California really seemed ruled and galvanized by griffin-riding Amazons. No kindly old gentleman running the show. No “sweethahts” from the mouths of well-intentioned patriarchs who felt duty- and honor bound to help damsels they assumed could only be in distress. I was stunned by an environment that, had I not witnessed it myself, would have seemed as improbable as Disney’s Tomorrowland. Call it Nopatriarchyland. Here, gender didn’t carry the same stigmas and assumptions. And this freedom from convention also was going on within graphic design. Rather than following the rules, designers in California seemed to be making them up. For women designers, this meant a double whammy, a perfect storm, a jellyroll of change: once liberated from the conventions of the old misogynist social order, they were able to take the next step to unshackle themselves from the conventions of design.
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