Great Design Takes More Than a Big Idea—Just Ask the Women Behind It

Written By Hyning Gan

If great design is meant to be invisible, what does that mean for the women who built it? From typography to UX, their contributions remain hidden in plain sight.

Pictured in Foreground: Beatrice Warde in 1925
Background: Muriel Cooper's poster "Communication by Design"

I’ve been thinking a lot about design education lately. Not just about what I’ve learned in design school, but about what I haven’t. It’s kind of meta, really—being in design school while simultaneously dissecting how design is taught. It feels like studying a map mid-journey—useful, but constantly revealing roads I never knew existed.

One of the first books I picked up in this foray into design education is A New Program for Graphic Design by David Reinfurt. I’m only a third of the way through—so no spoilers (as if there could be any in a book about historical design moments)—but what’s struck me the most is Reinfurt’s approach to teaching design within its broader context. Rather than treating design as a series of isolated technical skills, he connects it to history, industry, and systems of influence.

“It’s about how we define impact in design and if aesthetic labour has long been seen as secondary, how do we begin to challenge that assumption?” 
A *New* Program for Graphic Design by David Reinfurt–Book I’m currently reading

One of those moments of influence, for me, came in the form of Beatrice Warde. Her words were familiar—The Crystal Goblet is practically a rite of passage in typographic education—but I had never really learned about her as a figure. Warde worked at the American Type Founders (ATF)—an institution I had heard about endlessly in my design classes—yet she was rarely framed as a central force in shaping typography’s modern philosophy.

Since I’m writing this on International Women’s Day, it feels like an appropriate moment to sit with this—not in the conventional sense of saying “women should get more credit” (though I believe that, wholeheartedly), but in interrogating what kind of roles women have typically occupied in design and why those roles have historically been seen as less valuable.The issue is not just about credit—it’s about how we define impact in design. And if aesthetic labour has long been seen as secondary, how do we begin to challenge that assumption?

Some pages and notes from my copy of A New Program for Graphic Design


This is where Beatrice Warde’s The Crystal Goblet (or Printing Should Be Invisible) comes in. Her 1932 essay offers the eponymous vessel as a metaphor for typography. Warde argued that typography, when done well, should be invisible—like a crystal-clear wine glass that allows the richness of the wine (the content) to shine through. A flashy gold goblet might be impressive, but it distracts from what really matters: the thing inside it. This philosophy, now deeply embedded in modern design thinking, champions transparency, clarity, and function over decoration or embellishment. At its core, Warde’s argument makes total sense from a typographic standpoint. A book fully set in over-stylised Medieval Drop Caps would be exhausting to read, just as a convoluted layout could obscure the meaning of a piece of writing. But here’s where it gets complicated: if good design is meant to disappear, how do we recognise the labour that makes it possible?

Printing of "The Crystal Goblet or Printing Should be Invisible" from Beatrice Warde, The Crystal Goblet, Sixteen Essays on Typography, Cleveland, 1956

Warde didn’t design typefaces, but she shaped how we understand typography itself. Her essay cemented philosophies that are still held true in modern design education. Yet despite her intellectual leadership, Warde is often framed as a promoter of typography rather than a key figure in its evolution. Ironically, her own philosophy may have contributed to the invisibility of her contributions, reinforcing the idea that great design (and henceforth great designers) should be invisible.

This principle that design succeeds when it goes unnoticed aligns with modernist ideals, where form is dictated by function rather than ornamentation. But it also creates a hierarchy (and not in the good Gestalt Principle way)—one where the work of organising, clarifying, and refining is seen as less valuable than the work of originating an idea.

Historically, society has associated refinement, polish, and aesthetic shaping with women’s work—think of quilt-making or embroidery, often dismissed as mere ‘craft’ rather than recognised as art. The underlying assumption? That making something beautiful or readable is a lesser act than making something new.

“This undervaluation of refinement isn’t just a historical issue, it still structures who gets recognition in design today.”

Take tech, where women make up 53.5% of the design workforce, according to research from AIGA and Google. It’s one of the few technical professions within the tech industry where women are well-represented. And yet, despite holding more than half of design roles, only 11% of leadership positions are held by women (yes, I’m also acknowledging the gender roles at play that affect this statistic too like childcare, opportunity etc). The vast majority of women in tech design are concentrated in UX/UI roles—positions that focus on refining and improving experiences rather than defining new product categories. Their work is foundational, yet it is rarely perceived as visionary in the way that the invention of a new app, software, or hardware is.

This bias isn’t new. Muriel Cooper’s work is a prime example of this dynamic (whom I also just learned about in Reinfurt’s book). As the first design director at MIT Press, she pioneered a way to visually structure complex data long before digital UX had a name. Later, at MIT’s Visible Language Workshop, which evolved into the Aesthetics + Computation Group at the MIT Media Lab, she pushed typography beyond the static page, designing dynamic, multi-dimensional type systems that continue to shape digital interfaces today. Her work fundamentally influenced the design industry, yet her contributions are often framed as experimental initiatives rather than foundational innovation—a reflection of how refinement and system-building are undervalued in design history.

Left: Students in the early days of the Visible Language Workshop.
Right: Some of the most iconic posters from Cooper’s 40 year career.

It’s the same story in product and interface design, where women have shaped how we interact with technology but are rarely seen as the visionaries behind it.

The visual shorthand of computing—the icons that tell you where to click, what’s interactive, and how to move through digital spaces—didn’t appear out of nowhere. Susan Kare designed Apple’s first icon set, including the smiling Mac ☻, the command key ⌘, and the foundations of GUI (graphical user interface) design. Her work made computers more approachable, intuitive, and human. And yet, like many women in design, her contributions are often reduced to a footnote in the larger Apple mythology, overshadowed by the company’s male leadership.

Portrait of Susan Kane and the recognisable pixel icons she created for Macintosh


This disconnect—between shaping an experience and being seen as its true architect—extends far beyond tech. The same imbalance persists in industries that are design-driven at their core.

“Her career challenges Warde’s philosophy, proving that invisibility in design isn’t inevitable—it’s a choice in how we frame value.”

Take fashion, an industry built on design, where women make up 85% of fashion design graduates. Yet just 14% of major fashion brands are run by women. Even houses historically led by female designers now have male creative directors at the helm. The recent appointment of Demna at Gucci had me thinking about this again: how is it that an industry so dominated by women at the production and design levels still defaults to men as the ones with the big ideas?

It’s not all doom and gloom though—these defaults aren’t set in stone. They’re taught, reinforced, and repeated through teaching, which means they can be unlearned and reshaped. That’s why the work of educators like Ellen Lupton is so important. Lupton’s career exposes how these hierarchies are reinforced within design education itself. As senior curator at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and a longtime professor at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), she has spent decades making design processes and labour more visible. Through her books (Thinking with Type), exhibitions, and not to mention some of the best design reels out there, she has shown that the intellectual work behind typography and layout is just as significant as the final output. Her career challenges Warde’s philosophy, proving that invisibility in design isn’t inevitable—it’s a choice in how we frame value.

Ellen Lupton and her book Thinking with Type 3rd Edition


Even as a female designer, I won’t deny that I’m drawn to the big picture side of things. I love idea generation, conceptual frameworks, and the challenge of building something new. But through my deeper research into design education, I started to see just how much of what I work with—the systems, methodologies, and design thinking frameworks I take for granted—were shaped by women whose names I never learned in school.

I wish I had known about them earlier. Not just for representation’s sake, but because their stories redefine what we see as innovation. The design industry has long been obsessed with the "visionary"—but what if we valued refinement, iteration, and clarity just as much as invention?

“The design industry has long been obsessed with the “visionary”—but what if we valued refinement, iteration, and clarity just as much as invention?”

The reality is, we don’t need more rushed, half-baked ideas (looking at you, every VC-funded AI wrapper claiming to be an industry “disruptor”). We need better products, better systems, and better design. And that doesn’t come from endless novelty—it comes from careful, intelligent refinement. If we only define innovation by authorship, we will keep overlooking those who actually make design work. The real challenge isn’t just making these contributions visible—it’s redefining what we consider valuable in design in the first place.

Cherished photos of my fellow female design friends <3
Hyning Gan
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