Korea Feminist Design Practice Analysis

Background This study analyzes the characteristics of South Korean feminist design practices. Since the feminist reboot of South Korea in 2015, the hashtag, “#sexual_violence_m_OO_field” movement that took place in the art and culture field in October 2016 became the momentum in which women designers' voices were expressed as design practice. This study aims to prepare the framework to analyze this phenomenon of contemporary design practice. Methods In an analysis of feminist design practice, to draw concrete results, this study limited the research scope to the graphic design, the design field to which the researcher belongs. This study investigates feminist art sharing the history and trend of British and American feminist design practices in the historic context. From the history of British and American feminist art and design practices, this study draws a perspective of criticism and the framework of analysis. This study analyzes the domestic feminist design criticism. Results This study divided the types of classification according to content from the perspective of feminist design practice criticism into “political propaganda,” “emphasis of femininity,” and “deconstruction of dichotomy.” This study conducted an analysis, dividing the practices into: a practice as a ‘political propaganda' to reflect women designers' voices against inequality; a practice achieving the effect of subversion by clearly recognizing the difference between male and female and ‘emphasizing femininity' or considering female users; and a practice attempting ‘the deconstruction of dichotomy' inherent in the overall visual culture beyond the dichotomy between male and female. In addition, the potential of South Korean feminist design practices was categorized into: ‘design practice as an author;' ‘design practice as solidarity;' and ‘experiment on the possibility of media expansion' to examine its characteristics. Conclusions This study presented the potential of examples of the contemporary graphic design practices as feminist design practices. Hopefully, future researchers and designers would be able to achieve the chronology and insight on feminist design research and practice through this study.