International Women’s Day 2022: celebrating women and marginalised genders in the creative world

Here at It’s Nice That, around half of the designers, illustrators, photographers, animators, artists, etc., we feature and invite to speak at our Nicer Tuesdays talks are women. Yes we’re proud of it, but it shouldn’t, in this day and age, be something to shout about – it should be the norm. But it’s not, yet. Campaigns and networking groups such as Kerning the Gap and Ladies, Wine, and Design and lots of others are doing great things to address the imbalance, and get more women creatives and creatives of marginalised genders into the creative industry, and climb the ladder to more senior roles. But, in the meantime, days like International Women’s Day (today), which sits within Women’s History Month (March 2022), are a good opportunity to make the topics facing women and marginalised genders in the creative industry top of the agenda.

In that spirit, today we have an International Women’s Day takeover on It’s Nice That, with a host of features and stories entirely focused on women and marginalised genders, penned by an all-female team of writers.

In Follow Their Lead, Abigail Glasgow speaks to female creative directors at agencies and studios, about their experiences as women in the industry, and shifting the field’s gender script.

In The Male Gaze in 3D, Katie Menzies points out a bizarre trend for naked, bald women in 3D illustration, and examines its problematic roots.

In Women to Watch, Renée Elizabeth Clarke hand-picks five exciting talents in the world of graphic design and art direction to platform and encourage you to follow and work with.

We also have four profiles on women and non-binary practitioners: Livien Yin, whose painting series Paper Suns explores the “desires, uncertainties and pleasures” of Chinese American immigrants; Eugénie Bidaut, whose latest graphic design project tackles the erasure of women in design history; SanQian, whose super cute illustrations depict the unwavering love puppies have for humans; and photographer Celia Croft and stylist Kate Kidney-Bishop, whose book Core is an empowering survey of female bodybuilders.

In news, we spotlight two exciting group exhibitions: one by Bee Illustrates and Cheer Up Luv, subverting the historically oppressive term “hysterical”; and another by Layla Andrews, visualising the phrase: “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”.

To top it all off, we’ve worked with Singapore-based graphic designer Jasmin Chavez aka kool.type, to create our International Women’s Day 2022 identity, using her distinctively hazy, retro and impactful typography work to unite and bring the features to life.

Finally, we are dedicating this year’s International Women’s Day to two charities:

UN Women: raising urgently needed aid for the millions of women and girls fleeing Ukraine, or displaced by the war in Ukraine.

Women’s Aid: tackling domestic abuse against women and children.