Graphic Design and Our Unintentional Bias

How do you see the world?

Have you ever stopped to think about what influences the way you perceive and interact with things in your everyday life?

There is a theory that we see the world through “lenses”, or aspects about ourselves that may impact how we perceive the world. These lenses can include, sex, age, religion, political affiliation, et cetera. Anything you feel is a part of you, that shapes your perspective. In this journal post, I am going to be discussing my lenses, and the potential bias that might come with those as I continue onto my path in design.

The first, and arguably most important of my lenses is the fact that I am a black woman. Technically, I am biracial. My mother is white, and my father is black. However, that does not negate the fact that in most spaces I occupy, I’m only perceived as a light-skinned black girl. As much as this can affect my outlook on things, it can also affect others, with the preconceived notions that they may have about black people, and especially about black women. So for me, a lot of how I see things is the way they seem to be created without girls like me in mind, or in other words a complete lack of representation. You can see it a lot in advertising, whereas most brands seemed to not know that black people existed until the Black Lives Matter protests in May of this year. I feel this has always had a big influence on my art. I intentionally always include people of color in my drawings, because inclusivity is important to me. I don’t want people to look at my drawings and think there’s a lack of diversity.

My second most defining lens would be that I am a woman. Just like there are certain assumptions about black people, there are also assumptions about women. There are things that I have to be more cautious of as a woman that a man wouldn’t have to think twice about. I feel as though there’s also a stigma that women are less capable than men in professional fields, so that’s something that I’ll have to struggle against as I go into a professional field for graphic design.

Another major lens is the fact that I was raised in a middle-class household. I’ve never struggled with things like poverty or wondering where my next meal may come from. It’s easy to just think that this is what most people have, even though that’s not the case at all. I need to be able to overcome this ignorance as I work with all different types of people in my field. This also ties into the privilege that I have as a college student. Not everybody gets to go to college, for one reason or another, and to assume that it’s the norm could limit my experiences.

Overall, I believe that as important as my self-identity is, it’s also important to recognize the way your “lenses” can cloud your judgment at times. I believe we should all be vigilant and as self-aware as possible to prevent unintentional bias in our work and when interacting with others.