Dear all,

I'm enjoying the discussion provoked by this subject.

Products certainly have gender characteristics, and are often described as being masculine or 
feminine. We go as far as to say "macho", or "sexy" (sexy means feminine maybe). So some 
interesting couples are formed between the designer, the product and the consumer. Female 
designers can be designing rather masculine products which may be bought by female consumers, 
and we can observe the strong feminine influence on car interiors as we poor male are losing 
some of our dominance in the act of purchase and learning to live with values other than plain 
bloody horsepower !

Opposites attract in classic sexual parlance, yet we tend to associate masculine design vocabulary 
as being intended for male consumers and vice versa. Are we missing something here ? Is there 
some ground for deliberately aiming to seduce through opposite gender visual language, or are 
consumers still taking themselves too seriously ? I don't mean pink girly products for business 
men of course, more "femme fatale".

Market research on some mobile phones I was involved in a couple of years ago identified one as 
being "feminine" and "Italian" which I found amusing as an English male designer working in 
France. Maybe I was just subconsciously feeling the way to go.

French is of course a gender language as well, but with no logical connection whatsoever. You just 
have to learn that there are no clues to help you know which gender anything is, and forget about 
it as being anything other than a rather entertaining intellectual game.

La Loire is un fleuve.
Le Loir is une rivière.
What could be more feminine than un sein ?
What could be more masculine than une bitte ?

Design by the way is masculine, but that's just a conincidence.

David Balkwill
Senior lecturer Product Design
Manchester Metropolitan University