7 Female Designers You Should Know About
I’m back with a brand new list of 7 designers you should know about. This time around is female powerhouses.
According to AIGA’s 2019 design census, 61% of designers are female but only 11% of creative leadership roles are filled by women. Looking back on my own education experience, 84% of my design class was female but relatively 75% of the content in the curriculum was about male designers.
Yikes, talk about opposing perspectives of the industry. On one hand, we have females dominating the field and on the other hand, we are still trying to be seen.
This series was started to keep myself accountable and expand my knowledge of influential designers outside of the Euro-skewed textbooks from school. Key words being ‘outside textbooks’.
Paula Scher, Jessica Walsh, Barbara Kruger, April Greiman and Giorgia Lupi are respectively some of the most influential female designers who have pushed boundaries and shaped the industry for the better. However, these were the few female names taught about in classrooms and I wanted to highlight new designers I recently learned about. (I’ve linked their names to individual biography pages in case you wanted to learn more about them, too!)
Residing in Goa, India, Chaaya Prabhat is an independent graphic designer, hand-letterer, and illustrator. She received her degree in Hong Kong and has since been creating pieces for an impressive worldwide list of clients. Whether it's drawing book covers for Penguin Random House, making digital illustration pieces for Google, or designing a logo for an Obama Foundation project, Chaaya continuously finds ways to visually communicate through storytelling. The vibrant palette used throughout her work was influenced by her childhood spent in the colorful city of Chennai.
Instagram: @chaaya23
Born in 1896, Söre Popitz was a German designer and painter who made waves in the education and design world come the 20th century. She was one of the few women permitted into Academy of the Arts in Leipzig, and afterwards became a student at the Bauhaus. Söre is recognized for her work at the publishing house, Otto Beyer. Unfortunately, much of her work was destroyed in the bombing of Leipzig during World War II, but it is known that her style changed from constructivism to Informalism post-war.
Social entrepreneur and eco-conscious fashion designer, Maya Penn started her business at only 8 years old. Now at 22, Maya has spoken at 3 TED Talks, serves as a sustainability consultant, became an animator, is a filmmaker and is also part of the small percentage of black women in coding. She has been featured in multiple news platforms including Forbes magazine, NPR and Business Insider. Oh yeah, and her book, You Got This, is used in school curricula across the world to teach kids about socially-driven entrepreneurship.
Instagram: @mayasideas
As a researcher, designer, and educator, Sarah Edmands Martin is a storyteller at heart who is inspiring the next generation of designers. She has a notable list of awards, published work and exhibition appearances including features in Graphis, MIT Press and the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Currently an assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame, Sarah also worked on projects for Citibank, AIGA, IonQ and Missouri University of Science & Technology to name a few.
Instagram: @sarahedmands
Wu Tsang is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, activist and performer that centers her work around transgender and LGBTQ+ visibility. Born in Massachusetts and residing back-and-forth between New York and Berlin, Wu‘s work has taken her around the world to collaborate with other artists. Her work has been recognized internationally in museums including the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, Stedelijk Museum, and Antenna Space. In an interview with Art Basel, Wu states “My creative decisions were based on trying to capture a sociopolitical situation that my life was very embedded in. I now make hybrid documentary/fiction films, and performance has become the hinge for how I negotiate the politics of representation.”
Instagram: @wu_tsang
Lawyer turned human centered designer, Elise Roy is a deaf individual who is a changemaker for accessibility on an international scale. She is a firm believer that when we design for disability, everyone benefits. Elise has been an inclusive design consultant for Google‘s project of adding real-time captions to videos, has created safety glasses for those with hearing loss to better aid in sound-related tool warnings and has worked with Marriott to find solutions for disability-inclusive hotel rooms. In addition to that, she has also spoken at organizations like Microsoft, NASA, the United Nations, and Tedx.
Based in Sydney, Missy Dempsey is a multidisciplinary artist that emphasizes joy and optimism in her work. Missy specializes in the social-impact space had threads messages about body positivity in her illustrations, works alongside queer alliance groups, and spreads awareness about health initiatives. In addition to that, she creates 3D-printed sculptures alongside her husband at their company, Wow Mountain.
Instagram: @missydempsey