‘Too Many Men’ In Design

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31409, 30 June 1967, Page 2

‘Too Many Men ’ In Design

Women have far too long accepted household equipment designed and made for them by men who have never needed to use the finished articles for any length of time, says Miss Gaynor Ashford, who was recently awarded a diploma in industrial design by the School of Design, Wellington Polytechnic.

Many home appliances could be made easier to use and improved to suit the housewife better if women with domestic experience were the designers, she said.

Miss Ashford, who is one of the few qualified women designers in New Zealand and the youngest of them, is keen

to apply her own ideas to design, particularly in home appliances and furniture. Her main interest is ergonomics, the study of people at work. Many women suffered fa-

tigue only because they did not know how to avoid it, she said.

"More understanding of the physical make-up of the body helps to find easier and more natural ways of movement, thus reducing unnecessary exhaustion,” she said. For six months she worked on a thesis on “constructional play equipment for pre-school children” and she has designed a durable, coloured plastic-block combination for infants.

Her project had been accepted by a plastics company and should be on the market by Christmas, she said.

Miss Ashford, who comes from Rakaia, is working in product design in the Christchurch area. She plans to travel overseas soon to study new trends in technology. Because the School of Design in Wellington has been rated to the status of several British colleges, Miss Ashford will be able to do postgraduate work in any of them.