It’s Nice That celebrated International Womxn’s Day by finding out who some of their favourite women and non-binary creatives’ very own favourites were, collated together in a list of 100 brilliant creatives to be inspired by. They picked 10 women and I am so honored to be included in their selection. Read more here: https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/100-womxn-and-non-binary-creatives-to-be-inspired-by-international-womxns-day-090320
This year we’re celebrating International Womxn’s Day by finding out who some of our favourite women and non-binary creatives’ very own favourites are, collated together in a list of 100 brilliant creatives to be inspired by.
For the past few years, we have celebrated International Womxn’s Day by dedicating It’s Nice That to championing womxn working in the creative industries and the incredible breadth of work that they produce. In the process, we’ve investigated crossing the gender divide in textiles, discussed why there’s a lack of womxn in animation and heard from several new mums returning to work after maternity leave. We’ve also chatted to the likes of Anne Lund, Nadia Lee Cohen, Malika Favre, Natasha Jen, Tea Uglow and Joana Choumali, and Yumna Al-Arashi.
However, this year we decided to focus all our efforts into championing as many voices as possible in one place, collating 100 womxn and non-binary creatives to be inspired by this International Womxn’s Day and beyond.
To do this, we got in touch with ten creatives whose work, process and outlook we admire in order to find out which womxn and non-binary creatives working today keep them inspired. The following list is a mix of illustrators, stylists, comedians, activists, photographers and designers, each of whom represents what it means to be a womxn in the creative industry today: nuanced, empowering, hilarious, smart, ridiculously talented, and everything in between.
Next time you’re looking for a creative to commission, a speaker at your conference or someone to interview, we hope this list will be a valuable resource and will stop our industry falling on the usual names – let’s not forget that the UK creative industry alone remains 60 per cent male and 90 per cent white. We have discovered so many new names through this process and hope you do too.
Stephanie Specht
Belgian graphic designer Stephanie Specht runs Studio Specht, a design practice with a focus on brand identity, illustration and book design.
Working as a graphic designer to much acclaim over the past decade is Stephanie Specht, a Belgian designer with an art direction eye we absolutely adore. Rich and varied in her use of colour, typography and playful layouts, each project of Stephanie’s is somehow even better than the last – all because of her unique creative intuition.
Choosing her fellow graphic design peers as her creative womxn picks, the first is Crystal Zapata, a designer based in Chicago who, despite having only met her once, “I liked her a lot,” she says. “She was passing by Antwerp and since we only knew each other through Instagram, we thought it’d be great to meet up in person. We had a coffee and a super nice talk.” Ever since Stephanie has watched Crystal grow as a designer in style, admiring from afar: “She’s so free in her work,” she continues, “something I also really find important: to be able to renew, reinvent yourself all the time. Not an easy thing these days as a designer, but she’s good at it and it inspires me!”
Another designer is Sara De Bondt, who Stephanie has always admired and “even though I don’t know her personally that well, Sara played a big role in my life,” she tells It’s Nice That. Back in 2016 Sara advised Kali Nikitas, the chair of communication arts and founding chair of the MFA graphic design program at Otis College of Art, to visit Stephanie’s studio. “After that, Kali invited me twice to come to Otis for a residency, where I met some of the other female designers on my list: Tanya Rubbak, All the Way To Paris and Hezin O. I’m grateful for all these beautiful connections!”
Stephanie’s list in full:
Graphic designer Crystal Zapata
Antwerp neighbour and designer Ines Cox
Design educator Kali Nikitas
Designer Tanya Rubbak
Tanja and Petra from design studio All the Way to Paris
Designer Sigrid Calon
Designer Sara De Bondt
Type designer Charlotte Rohde
Her colleague and designer Ine Meganck
Designer Hezin O