Is design a boys’ club? The case for more diversity in design

Statistics across the design industry point to an alarming lack of diversity in age, ethnicity, gender, location, education, and experience. So, is design a (WMP*) boys’ club? It certainly felt like it in the early days of my career, when I wanted to start my own design agency but was intimidated by the statistics—just 0.1% of creative agencies are founded by women. Now that I’ve overcome that hurdle and started up a successful studio, I want to talk about the issue of diversity in design and explore opportunities for tackling the industry’s diversity problem in 2025.

I’ll explore inclusivity and diversity in-depth and provide a broad overview that includes graphic design, creative agencies, and related fields like architecture, product design, and interior design. You’ll also find supportive micro-communities to join and interact with other design professionals.

*WMP: That’s White Male Privilege for the uninitiated.

With Meta announcing the scrapping of its diversity initiatives just days before the Trump inauguration, I expect other companies to follow suit soon, shifting away from DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) policies. This is disappointing news for many, as efforts to improve diversity in the tech and design sectors are met with a significant setback.

So, does Meta’s move spell doom and gloom for diversity in design, or is there still hope (and room) for improvement?

Unfortunately, the bad news comes on top of an already sorry situation. According to the 2019 American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) Design Census, conducted in collaboration with Google and the last major survey of the design industry in the US, design was already a closed-door affair for many, with only 3% of designers identifying as Black/African American and 8% Hispanic, marking a distinct lack of Latino and Black culture in design. While 61% of respondents were female, women designers remain heavily misrepresented at higher levels within agencies, tending instead to be more dominant in the self-employed and small business owner categories.  

There’s also a clear divide along the lines of location, with rural designers outside of large cities and creative hubs missing out on around $50,000 in annual salary if they were located in Ohio as opposed to California. 

Other statistics offered a slightly brighter outlook. The number of designers identifying as LGBTQIA+ increased by 5% between 2017 and 2019, making up 15% of the 2019 census. Compared to designers in full-time employment, who tended to drop off after four years, self-employed designers reported more job longevity, with the majority having worked 11+ years. Since many women in art and design are self-employed, this speaks positively for female designers having reasonable staying power in the industry, if not the top agency jobs. 

From a broader outlook, what do the stats tell us about the state of diversity in design today and the likelihood of change soon? 

The bad news is that design still appears to be a (white) boys’ club, with men overwhelmingly dominating the top jobs and landing creative director roles. Although more than 60% of graphic design graduates in the US are women, women designers hold only 5-11% of creative director positions, and only 0.1% of creative agencies are founded by women. Those are the kind of numbers that made starting my own design studio feel like an unattainable dream back in the early days.  

Designer Jessica Walsh was galvanized by these alarming numbers to found a non-profit initiative, Ladies, Wine & Design, in 2015 to boost women’s support, resources, and representation in design. As Walsh has passionately argued, women should be at the decision-making table of agencies worldwide, not simply admitted to the room. 

The pressing issue in 2025 is still the disparity between minority groups (defined by gender, ethnicity, education, or financial background), clearly wanting to work in the design industry, and the reality that so few are at the top of the tree within the profession. Despite the progress, there’s still a lack of diversity in graphic design.

In other areas of design, I see similar issues to those of women in graphic design and creative agencies, but with problems particular to certain fields. 

Interior design, for example, suffers from a white, posh problem—86% of interior designers working in the US are white, as reported by Forbes, and the industry press consistently champions designers from more highly educated and wealthier backgrounds rather than those from lower socio-economic circumstances.

Architecture appears to struggle with an ongoing WMP issue that is consistent across most countries. According to Data USA, 73.6% of architects registered in the States are men, and nearly two-thirds are white. 

The global culture of architecture continues to wrestle with its history as a traditionally “privileged white male profession”, according to Robbie Turner, Director of Diversity and Inclusion at RIBA. This body represents the architecture profession in the UK. Female architects often enter the industry to find that its male-dominated partner culture, construction, sets an unequal tone from the outset, building an impenetrable ‘boys’ club’ that excludes women architects from design conversations and senior partner roles.  

This ingrained architectural gender bias can be seen most clearly in the industry’s pay disparity, with full-time female architects in the US receiving just 78.5 percent of their male colleagues’ salary, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There’s no shortage of talented women architects, but there is a lack of representation and fairness within the industry.

A similar story emerges in industrial design and product design, with only 19% of practicing industrial designers in the US being women designers, according to a study by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA). Perhaps this industry’s connection to traditionally male-dominated manufacturing has influenced the accessibility of the profession to female designers. A dire shame, given that so few products are designed with women in mind despite representing at least 50% of the consumer market. The common phrase ‘Shrink it and Pink it’ is a grim reminder of the vast majority of products that were originally designed to specifically accommodate male consumers before simply being downsized and recolored for a female market.     

Can we put these issues across the design industry down to a clash of the old guard and the new, with overwhelmingly male leadership overseeing a dinosaur-like rule of law over younger designers? In part, for sure, but not completely. It seems that there are far more complex factors at play, including ‘macho’ language that often excludes women from the conversation, pay gaps, lack of internal support for women designers (who are often expected to grit and bear the workplace cultures they enter into), and lack of provision and flexibility for women who have childcare responsibilities.

So, where do we go from here? How do we bring people into the room and allow them to speak and lead, not simply listen in? 

Fortunately, numerous organizations and individuals are putting design’s diversity problem front and center. From non-profit grassroots groups to designers who offer different directions and opinions to the accepted norm, there are people out there who are acting to create change within design.  

Read on to discover support groups, mentorship schemes, helpful resources, and inspirational content from impassioned individuals who are speaking out on the lack of diversity in design and offering solutions to build a more inclusive future for our industry. 

According to the 2019 AIGA Design Census, only 3% of designers are Black, and volunteer non-profit organization Where are the Black Designers was established to advocate for positive change in this respect. The group organizes events, meetups, and partnerships to boost the accessibility of the design industry for Black designers, as well as building a supportive creative community within the US and UK. 

British graphic designer Mary Hemingway set up Design by Women in 2020, a blog that showcases the often overlooked “work of women and gender expansive creatives whose work I admired and who I hadn’t seen very much anywhere else.”

Design by Women now has 172,000 Instagram followers, with Hemingway leading a team of international volunteers contributing to the blog. On the website, you’ll find articles that tackle some of the frustrating and taboo issues women face in the design industry, including ageism, LGBTQ+ inclusivity, and the significant challenges that new mothers face when returning to work, with proactive suggestions and tips to help women thrive in a creative career.

Graphic designer Jessica Walsh (of &Walsh agency) founded the non-profit Ladies, Wine & Design in 2015 in response to the alarming absence of female creative directors. The group hosts free-to-attend events in cities worldwide to bring women designers together and offer opportunities to share ideas and career advice. 

You can usually find an LW&D group locally—just search on Instagram for the group and city. In addition to meetups in the US, some groups meeting regularly across the UK, Europe, and Australia.

Established in New York in 2018, the Black Artists + Designers Guild aims to support Black makers, interior designers, and artists by creating inclusive spaces and a collaborative community. The organization curates exhibitions, designs community spaces, and initiates entrepreneurial and philanthropic programs. 

A community and directory for LGBTQIA+ designers, Queer Design Club fosters both online and offline spaces for designers to meet and collaborate, including portfolio review hangouts and summits. 

Boasting more than 4,000 members across 73 countries, the club also conducts frequent surveys of the LGBTQIA+ design community, helping this group to have more visibility in the design industries.

Through grants, research, and educational and social initiatives, the BWAF is an advocacy group that aims to change the culture of the architecture and construction industries and to make them more inclusive for women designers. 

Its annual BEVY Leadership Awards honor female trailblazers in architecture and related disciplines, and the charity hosts a variety of events in New York, as well as online support resources. 

This UK-based charity operates across 11 sectors, including architecture, to help high-achieving young people who might otherwise not benefit from the connections and financial support to enter top universities and competitive professions. 

For young aspiring architects, this is a great starting point for learning about embarking on a career in the industry. The charity assigns volunteer mentors to students and offers online resources, university application support, and work placement opportunities.  

The creative industries have made progress since I started my career, but they clearly have a diversity problem that persists stubbornly, even into 2025. By narrowing its talent pool, the design sector risks missing out on a wealth of exceptional skill, fresh ideas, and new outlooks, as well as generating creative output that is narrowly created by and aimed at the privileged few. 

With Meta’s worrying backtrack on diversity initiatives, other US businesses may take this as a green light to do the same, making the outlook for improved diversity in design look increasingly bleak. 

So does it all spell doom and gloom for the near future? The good news is that diversity in design is an ongoing battle, and we are lucky to have many creatives who are impassioned to resolve the problem in their own way, forging supportive connections and micro-communities where minority groups can seek advice and opportunities. If you’re concerned about the lack of diversity in design and want to do something about it, the groups and individuals mentioned above are a great place to start. 

Many creative businesses have been founded in reaction to the problematic issues surrounding inclusion, with female-founded agencies and minority-supporting collectives offering a different voice to the mainstream. And if you can’t find anything in your local town or city, why not create your own? You’ll no doubt find others who feel isolated in their working situation. Reach out and buddy up, and perhaps, step by step, design will become a more welcoming and inclusive space for all.  

Looking for kickstart resources to help you create the change in your industry? Make a statement with an activism template for print or online, or bring your community together with a social media event template. And read more about how to create more inclusive content.