As a graphic designer working in a public university in Ghana and married to a Ghanaian, Sub-Saharan African characters are often the subjects of my illustrations. As a European portraying Africans I am in a position where I might be unconsciously reinforcing racial stereotypes.
Though I have been somewhat immersed to the culture in Ghana through my little less than five-year stay in the country, I am an outsider looking in, in many ways. I differ from the group I am depicting by my culture, my nationality, my age and my race. As I returned to my country of origin to do my Masters in Design I began to ponder over my role as a producer of social representations. I began to question my motivations and wanted to find out whether I harboured unconscious racial biases and how these biases might translate in the design process.
1.1. Significance and Aims
Social representations affect social realities. How different groups are portrayed has a significant impact on how they are seen, how the group members see themselves and what kind of roles the group members can take in the society. Illustrators and designers in general have a responsibility to aim at producing representations with minimum or no social bias, including racial and ethnic bias.
Not much has been written on the effects of awareness of racial bias and ethnic bias in the design process from the point of view of a design practitioner. More information is needed on how awareness of one’s prejudices affects the design process in practice. The study seeks to deepen understanding of the issue of racial and ethnic bias in design at a micro level and joins the debate of de-colonising design.
This study is about the way the designer’s awareness of her personal racial biases affect the design process when portraying out-groups. Furthermore, it explores the role of surrounding visual culture, history and personal experiences in the formation of racial stereotypes when a European designer illustrates African characters for microstock image collections.
1.2. Theoretical Frame and Research Method
The study utilises the Stereotype Content Model of Fiske et all (2002) and agrees with the second wave of studies on social bias described by Dovidio (2001), which suggest that social biases are based on normal cognitive processes.
Autoethnographic method is used to gain deeper understanding on role of awareness of personal racial bias in the design process. The study is an addition to other studies using more conventional methods taking a micro level approach.
1.3. Case Study
The case study of the thesis is the production of a series of illustrations depicting Sub-Saharan African characters to microstock image banks. Autoethnographic narrative follows how the project evolves from an attempt to provide variety to illustrations of Sub-Saharan African characters to microstock image banks to a sense making quest of a cultural practice where Ghanaian children, known as house girls or house boys, find themselves under living arrangements resembling both unofficial adoption and domestic servitude. The focus of the narrative is on identifying racial stereotypes, personal racial biases behind the stereotypes, their sources and the effect that the awareness of these things has on the design process.
1.4. Outline of the Thesis
The second chapter takes a look at the literature concerning racial bias and stereotypes. The following chapter presents autoethnographic method and the case study. Chapter four narrates the design process. Chapter five consists of the analysis of the narrative and discussions on the results. The sixth chapter summarises the findings and the final chapter gives recommendations for future studies.
ILLUSTRATING THE OTHER 