Pleased to see that the D & AD president who'll succeed Simon Waterfall, Garrick Hamm, is going to encourage more women to work in design. He says he 'won't be indulging any personal whims', but doesn't say any more than he'll do what's best for D&AD as a brand. Very interested to know what he's got up his sleeve. If anyone has any ideas and can let us know what the industry's in for (and even how this forum can help) please share them.

PS Has there ever been a female D&AD president?

I think there should be more women in design as well. I know of one studio where they do not hire women designers, not sure about the reason for it but I think that is absolutely ridiculous. Why should men be better designers than woman?

The truth is that of all the designers I've worked with, the women have (on the whole) not only been actually better at the job but more pleasant to deal with too. I think some element of positive discrimination ought to be used to encourage more female designers to join - and then stay in - the industry.

Very difficult discussion this... we are encouraged to engage the best people for the job, we must not discriminate between candiates at interview regardless of race, sex, age, religion etc... which is absolutely correct. The design industry recruits graduate who by the fact that they have been to university are predominantly middle class, and white... I'm not sure of the balance between male and female.

So our studios can only reflect the graduate pool which doesn't reflect society at large... The challenge for the future is to encourage more young people to go on to university and that way hopefully tap into talent that would otherwise not be realised. A start would be that those of us who are employers offer work placements to local school students, and vist schools to speak to students to 'big up' our industry.

Positive discrimination to me is not a good idea in design. I only want the best people working for me and working generally (there's too much mediocre stuff out there anyway, but that's another debate!)... in fact over the last ten years of employing people, I guess my staff have been 80% female... Positive discrimination works in many industries, where the work is more process driven, I think in jobs that are largely creative, talent is the key and that's a gift that is independent of gender.

I'm happy to report that while testking 646-204 perhaps we can admit that while there are profound neuroanatomical differences between men 646-223 and women and their perceptions of the opposite sex, our graphic design and art seem to be measurable by a common 70-642 testking yardstick. The work profiled by Gomez-Palacio and Vit amply demonstrates that women produce graphic 646-656 design in every way comparable to that of men.