B*tch Better Have My Money Heat Index | Design is within the fibers.
“pay equity”, “economic justice”, “racial pay gaps”, “black women’s pay gap”, “gender pay gap”, “women leadership”, “women creative directors”, AIGA, #BBHMM, Rihanna, debt, bankruptcy, “2016 Design Census”, “valuing women’s work”, “how much to charge as a designer”, “design salaries”, “art directors”, “creative directors”, “unclear data”, infographics, “data visualization”, “heat map”, “heat index”, “pop culture”, “design”, “freelance”
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B*tch Better Have My Money Heat Index

12

Feb

B*tch Better Have My Money Heat Index

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A creative director is a highly-valuable and often sought-after position. Yet as more women have entered the field of design to pursue leadership roles, average earnings have reportedly gone down as much as 34 percent. This reflects a larger trend in gender pay gaps, where it appears when women do the work, it’s not seen as highly valuable.

A trend line doesn’t capture how I feel about this as much as Rihanna. Her hit “Bitch Better Have My Money” (#BBHM) is my anthem when prospective clients or employers undervalue my time, talent, and ability. Rather than show how this pay disparity looks on a line graph, I wanted to show how it feels when we aspire to being treated as equals vs. actually being undervalued.

The 2016 Design Census is the first industry survey to capture design salaries across race and gender, among many other characteristics. Past surveys often focused on region and size of organization. Which is why trend data based on gender (and race) are filled with questions and uncertainty. In a handful of examples, I show how that feels too. *Note: With the exception of 2011, most average salary data was available either publicly, or AIGA member-only access.

Update: in August 2019, AIGA Eye on Design published a piece called “What Are You Worth?” an irreverent quiz meant to measure your success against the face of famous graphic designer Michael Beirut. I could not help but notice the visual style, color palette, and irreverent tone are completely lifted from my work. Here is a screenshot:

This is deeply ironic and precisely makes my point. My design approach was very deliberate. By choosing Rihanna and not someone like, say, Michael Beirut, I was not at all interested in centralizing White men as the face of success and outrage. Yet, my concept is completely co-opted and barely elevated with a very, very basic quiz.

 

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