Gender issues have not been ignored by the graphic design
profession—which prior to the 1980 s was predominantly a men’s club and
today is weighted more toward women in designer and design management
roles. Yet, although female graphic designers have increased their overall
presence and individual prestige within the field, few have used their design
and communications skills to redefine or restructure visual language. The
editors of Bitchrealized that while it was not easy to alter basic lexicons, it
was important to raise fundamental issues about gender inequities that had
been simmering below the surface for ages.
Toward this end, yet with greater determination to make a
substantive (and educational) impact, members of a design collective in
England called the Women’s Design and Research Unit (WD+RU)—
founded in 1994 and including Teal Triggs (b. 1957 ), Liz McQuiston
(b. 1952 ), and Sian Cook (b. 1962 )—sought means of addressing continuing
inequities within the design field. They targeted the once-arcane yet newly
democratized digital realm of font design as both a forum and medium for
altering values and perceptions. They decided to create a font comprised of
symbolic pictographs and word-bites that were engaged by using
conventional keyboard strokes. This, they hoped, would be an effective way
to both enter and engage the consciousness of users.
The resulting font, Pussy Galore, named after the bombshell
heroine of James Bond’s Goldfingerfilm and memorably played by the actress
Honour Blackman, was begun in 1994 and completed in early 1995 (although
it continues to be somewhat open-ended in terms of final form). It was
commissioned by Jon Wozencroft, the editor of Fuse(the experimental-type
magazine published by FontShop International), for publication in Fuse 12:
Propaganda(winter 1994 ), but only a portion of the entire typeface was
published at that time due to a variety of technical reasons.
Pussy Galore, the fictional character, was what McQuiston and
Triggs call a “femme fatale with a mission,” who maximized her sensual
endowment as a tool of power rather than subservience. “She was
wonderfully sexy and at the same time strong and in control,” says Triggs.
“We hope by appropriating Pussy Galore as a term and typeface title that it
will get people to think twice not only about its use but also about other
words that usually denote [the] negative... concerning women. We also
wanted to use language which celebrated women—hence the ambiguity of
the term.”
So, whatever contemporary or nostalgic images or ideas that Pussy
Galore evokes in the minds of beholders—cocksmanship or Blackman’s
sexual omnipotence—the font offers unique independent frames of
reference that reveal numerous myths about women. In this way, Pussy
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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