WD+RU

2025 | Talk

Design Stories Warsaw: ‘Women's Design + Research Unit: Networks of Educational Activism’, SWPS University, Warsaw, 20-21 November 2025.

2025 | Talk

The Beatrice Warde Memorial Lecture 2025: ‘They Refuse to Keep Quiet: Thirty Years of the Women's Design + Research Unit’, St Bride Foundation, London, 28 October 2025.

2025 | Badge

To mark WD+RU’s 30 years of educational activism, a limited-edition (30) commemorative badge inspired by Sheila Levrant de Bretteville’s seminal poster and message, Women in Design: The Next Decade (1975) – WD+RU continues to promote a more equitable and inclusive world.

2025 | Interview

We often get requests from design students for interviews and information for dissertations. We were especially taken with the publication produced by Marie Luise Schröder, whilst studying graphic design at ‘Hochschule Mainz’, Germany. This work explores the Individual and the Collective in Graphic Design.

240 pages, format: 120x200mm, the textile wrapper is 70x70cm, screen-printed front and back.

2025 | Pussy Galore > Bestia Galore

Designed by Italian design students, Anna Carolina Robbiati and Alice Oriani, Bestia Galore is an experimental feminist dingbat font aiming to bring back to life Pussy Galore’s visual dictionary for 2025.

Anna told us: “We maintained the same concepts structure, but updated with an in-depth analysis of a wider range of definitions and meanings, obviously strictly connected with our social context and Italian reality. Some of the principles and words you’ll notice are basically the same and we can say without doubt that Bestia wouldn’t exist without Pussy. Our font is definitely a beast, sometimes could be a bestie, but doesn’t hide her deep rage. We have credited your support and effort to the feminist movement within the graphic field both on the printed outcome of our project… So we want to deeply thank you: learning about WD+RU and Pussy Galore has been a rad plot-twist during our research process and it set a high standard for our final goal.”

2025 | Instagram Archive:

2024: Celebration

The Women's Design + Research Unit is 30 years old!

2024 | Exhibition:

Pussy Galore featured in ‘Same Bold Stories?: Typeface design by women and queers in the 20th and 21st centuries’ exhibition. Klingspor Museum, Offenbach, 20 July–24 November.

Poster design: Paula Heinrich.

2024/2025 | Exhibition: We Profess poster selected for the 20th anniversary travelling juried exhibition, ‘I Profess: the graphic design manifesto’, curated by Chris Corneal and Audrey Bennett.

5–16 Feb Portland State University, USA.

16 Feb–15 March Metrospace, East Lansing, MI, USA.

15–30 April University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, UK.

1–30 June San Francisco State University, USA.

9 Aug–20 Sept University of Michigan, USA.

6 Sept–4 Oct University of Memphis, USA.

13 Jan-28 Feb Syracuse University, USA.

4 Feb-4 Mar Illinois State University, USA. https://www.audreygbennett.com/baohouse/i-profess

2023 | Exhibition:

Pussy Galore poster featured in the exhibition, ‘The Revolution Will Be Digitized: Typefaces from Emigre & FUSE’, Apr 27–Nov 5 2023, Poster House, New York.

https://posterhouse.org/exhibition/the-revolution-will-be-digitized-typefaces-from-emigre-fuse/

Coverage of ‘Brave New Normal: Intergenerational Mentoring + Women in Design’:

Creative Review https://www.creativereview.co.uk/women-design-inequality/

RCA Story https://www.rca.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/supporting-women-in-graphic-design-through-intergenerational-mentoring/

2020/21/22 | Research Report: Brave New Normal: Intergenerational Mentoring + Women in Graphic Design

How might intergenerational mentoring inform how women navigate graphic design careers in a post-Covid-19 world?

This report presents the outcomes of Brave New Normal – a research project which looks at intergenerational mentoring for women in graphic design.

Download the Executive Summary and/or the Full Report: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/122e1zJqMaX3iGmf8kbVTrkj53v6ZkmOc?usp=sharing

2020/21/22 | Research Project:

WD+RU have teamed up with Lorna Allan from Hidden Women of Design to collaborate on a research project, Brave New Normal. Through a series of workshops and an online questionnaire, we are exploring some of the challenges women are facing in the design industry and are looking to expand, investigate and research how an intergenerational mentorship program might be beneficial to our professional and academic community in graphic design. 

Brave New Normal is drawing on mentoring expertise from academia, design organisations and collectives, freelancers and design studios. Via a consultative process, our intent is to question received narratives about career lifecycles and explore how different kinds of knowledge are valued.

This is currently a work in progress, but we aim to be able to publish our findings early in 2022 and consider future developments.

2019 | Publication:

Pussy Galore Buddah of the Future: Women, Graphics, etc., Catherine de Smet (translated from the French by Miriam Rosen) in ‘The Graphic Design Reader’, Anthology Editors: Teal Triggs & Leslie Atzmon.

2018 | Exhibition:

Pussy Galore, ‘Do it (her) self’, 16 November–2 December 2018, Fundacja Nośna, Kraków, Poland. Curator: Zuzanna Dzwonkowska, Nośna Foundation.

“An exhibition devoted to the graphic design of women… that raises issues related to social involvement.”

http://nosna.pl/en/do-it-herself/

Photos by Michalina Rolnik, courtesy Nośna Foundation.

2018 | Poster + Publication:

Her Velocity letterpress poster and double page spread.

‘Velocity: Type, Time & Language’, Exhibition and Publication by Cooper + Hutchinson, London College of Communication, 15 September–15 October 2018.

2018 | Publication:

‘Feminismen tar form' (feminism takes shape) by Kristina Bore.

Reprinted in Contemporary Art Stavanger booklet (translated from Norwegian to English) distributed at the art fair UNTITLED. San Francisco, January 2018. Edition of 250.

Texts for the booklet were selected to show some of the span of material published on CAS.