16th Annual Designing Women

Welcome to the 16th Annual Designing Women edition of DTG Magazine and the Graphic Design & Publishing Center … the annual quest to find the very best in women designers in graphic design, illustration, photography, typography, advertising, screen printing and visual communications. Enjoy the trip

16th Annual Designing Women THIS YEAR WE HAVE A BUMPER-CROP of great personalities from the design, painting, and illustration worlds. Ladies and gentlemen may we present : * Ania Szerszen * Anna Pater * Brianna Garcia * Danielle Levitt * Eleftheria Alexandri * Irina Vinnik * Katia Zubkova * Lacey * Marian Bantjes * Marie Brassely * Maura Jarve * Naomi Atkinson * Sara Hingle * Veerle Pieters * Virginia Robles-Villalba
… and believe it or not, there are more in the pipeline that we didn’t get to for today! First, a little reminiscing …

In 2009, we titled Nena Anderson’s gallery “Lady sings Design” — well, she’s still doing design and photography, and as predicted, her music career is going great guns. Listen to the latest tunes : www.nenaanderson.com

In 2008, we introduced you to Amy Dresser. Well, she’s been busy — with yet more awesome Photoshop retouching … just roll your mouse over some of these: www.amydresser.com

Amy Wasserman takes us back to one of the very first years of Designing women with her awesome Photoshop collage illustrations. It’s great to catch up with Amy to see she’s doing truly great work — still in illustration, but also design, portraits, and more. www.cutnpaced.com

And now, the surf for …

The 16th Annual Designing Women

Cartoons come to life

16th Annual Designing Women for 2011 in DTG Magazine

Brianna Garcia is a General Artist involved in Disney costume design — she writes about this piece:
Quoting  begins “Taken at Comic-Con 2010. A recreation of my drawing “Smile for the Camera. I’m the Alice in this photo…” Quoting  ends
She also applies her talents to illustrating shoes for friends, and for sale. Nice work!
READ THIS REPORT Full story : Brianna Garcia gallery on DeviantArt
check out these cool fonts and type graphics Custom shoes illustrations

Irina Vinnik

16th Annual Designing Women for 2011 in DTG Magazine

Irina Vinnik is from Saint Petersburg, Russia … her “Skechbook” is spectacular, considering she uses just a simple gel pen (Pilot), sometimes also “PITT Artist Pen” Faber-Castell.
      Irina was educated as an architect, has been a web designer, but now she writes and illustrates children’s books. She makes a very rough sketch with a pencil and then illustrates the final piece, never removing the pencil work.
READ THIS REPORT Full story : Irina Vinnik
check out these cool fonts and type graphics See her Sketchbook Portfolio (Slow loading, have patience!)

Marian Bantjes

16th Annual Designing Women for 2011 in DTG Magazine

Marian Bantjes is a designer, typographer, writer and illustrator working internationally from her base on a small island off the west coast of Canada, near Vancouver.
      Marian started working as a book typesetter in 1984 and opened her own design firm in 1994 employing up to 12 people. Although there are hundreds of spectacular pieces in her portfolio, we loved this campaign designed for Saks Fifth Ave. using scripts and flourishes.
READ THIS REPORT Full story : www.bantjes.com
check out these cool fonts and type graphics We loved this type-inspired series for Valentine’s Day


 

Designing Women Gallery Continues on the next page …

16th Annual Designing Women We continue the 16th Annual Designing Women edition with Ania Szerszen, Lacey Photography and Sara Hingle . . .

Dream Shepherds

16th Annual Designing Women for 2011 in DTG Magazine

Ania Szerszen is from Wroclaw, Poland and is involved in Graphic Design and Illustration.
      Someone ‘nominated her “Dream Shepherds” project for this issue, but we could not find any other info on Ania other than this Flickr gallery.
READ THIS REPORT Full story : Ania Szerszen
check out these cool fonts and type graphics Scroll through her Flickr gallery for more

Pushing Boundaries: Lacey, Still Life Photographer

16th Annual Designing Women for 2011 in DTG Magazine

Lacey has been busy — building creative campaigns for everyone from Harper’s Bazaar to Diet Coke.
      Lacey is a master of still life photography and design. She builds and photographs spectacular constructs of real life.
READ THIS REPORT Full story : Lacey Photography
check out these cool fonts and type graphics Take a stroll through her portfolio

Danielle Levitt, Portraitist and Street Culture Photographer

16th Annual Designing Women for 2011 in DTG Magazine

Danielle Levitt was born with all the confidence and curiosity necessary to make it as a photographer. In both her high-fashion commercial shots and documentary style street portraits, her images are astonishingly honest and perceptive, exploring a type of beauty beyond the mere surface of makeup and clothing. In this interview she chats about her journey through the street style photography scene, how she captures personalities through the lens, and about how exploring video and technology will take her work to the next level.
READ THIS REPORT INTERVIEW: Danielle Levitt, Portraitist and Street Culture Photographer

Sara Hingle: light touch

16th Annual Designing Women for 2011 in DTG Magazine

Sara Hingle grew up in Perth, Western Australia and went on to study Design and Illustration at Curtin University. Since then she has illustrated for numerous clients such as Universal Music, Elle, Frankie, MTV and Black + White Magazines to name a few.
      She has the rare talent to actually depict not just the likeness of the subject, but the personality and emotion as well.
READ THIS REPORT SEE : Sara Hingle’s Portfolio (Slow loader, but worth the wait!)
check out these cool fonts and type graphics See the See more


 

Designing Women Gallery Continues on the next page …

16th Annual Designing Women We continue the 16th Annual Designing Women edition with Anna Pater, Katia Zubkova, Eleftheria Alexandri and Naomi Atkinson . . .

Anna Pater

16th Annual Designing Women for 2011 in DTG Magazine

We ran across Anna Pater in this year’s talent search, but all we could find is this quote from Joel Delane. We think it quite says enough …
      “Anna hails from Wroclaw, Poland. At only 20 she’s one hell of a talented illustrator and digital artist. Quoting herself as a Dreamer, Citizen & Impressions collector, it’s no surprise to see her dreamworld come alive in her designs.”
READ THIS REPORT Full story : Anna Pater Graphic Designer
check out these cool fonts and type graphics See the See more

The splendid typography of Katia

16th Annual Designing Women for 2011 in DTG Magazine

Katia Zubkova creates some really nice branding from her studios in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
      Scroll the link here and see a world of sparkling advertising, illustration, graphic design work from Katia! Nice stuff!
READ THIS REPORT Full story : Katia Zubkova
check out these cool fonts and type graphics We loved this 3D Paper sculpture

Marie Brassely: Type Fly-by


      Marie Brassely produces spectacular typographic buzz-bys — great stuff! Unfortunately I cannot speak French. Fortunately I don’t have to in order to enjoy her wonderful work.
READ THIS REPORT Full story : Marie Brassely
check out these cool fonts and type graphics See the See video full screen

Eleftheria Alexandri : I Like Yellow

16th Annual Designing Women in DTG

Thanks to Chuck Green we got to meet Eleftheria Alexandri! She’s an illustrator, who currently splits her time between London and Greece. Her work includes editorial, publishing and advertising as well as bespoke pattern design.
      We were particularly amazed at her art book The Fish That Ate The Ocean Clover which is a uniquely wonderful combination of design and sculpture — shown at art museums and galleries all over the place.
READ THIS REPORT I Like Yellow
check out these cool fonts and type graphicsEle’s wonderful Towel alphabet

Naomi Atkinson: thorough understanding

16th Annual Designing Women in DTG

Naomi Atkinson has worked in the design industry for over 9 years, working at three leading London agencies with world renowned clients such as Audi, British Telecom, Macmillan Cancer Support and Aviva.
      Naomi is a passionate, creative designer, with a drive to push the boundaries of typical web design. We liked all of her “personal” portfolio, not just for the design sense, but her stunning ability to “see” the project, and design for a wide, diverse field of clients!
READ THIS REPORT Full story : Naomi’s personal portfolio site
check out these cool fonts and type graphics See The stuff in my head


 

Designing Women Gallery Continues on the next page …

16th Annual Designing WomenWe continue the 16th Annual Designing Women edition with Jacqui Faye. Maura Jarve, Virginia Robles-Villalba — a revisit to a previous designing woman, Veerle Pieters, video and the never ending continuation of DTG Magazine’s Annual Designing Women . . .

Looks are deceptive

16th Annual Designing Women in DTG

Christine nominated Jacqui Faye of JFaye Designs in Arizona, calling her a “Rennaisance woman” … So we went into her design site, (link #1 below) and saw, yes, some rather nice branding, design work, and even packaging. She has designed a lot of web sites.
      But then I caught wind of her “Red Sexy Shoes” site… whoa! Jacqui appears to have a second, parallel existance. Then we discovered her blog — whoa again — and scrolled and scrolled. What fun. A little tawdy, a little bawdy and a lot of fun.
READ THIS REPORT This is Jacqui Faye’s ‘day job’ web site
check out these cool fonts and type graphics Sexy Red Shoes

Maura Jarve: stylish clean

16th Annual Designing Women in DTG

Justin Seibert suggested we go and visit the site of Maura Jarve. We went, and we saw some rather clean and distinct design work. The above graphic is a “rough” of the site’s logo. Justin writes:
Quoting  begins She’s done a lot of work for us for our clients on landing pages and Web sites and has a great eye for not only creating something aesthetically pleasing, but helps with eye flow and conversions as well. Quoting  ends
READ THIS REPORT here’s the site Complete with hand script logo from above
check out these cool fonts and type graphics See another example of Maura’s Logo work

Virginia Robles-Villalba: Spirits Awaken

16th Annual Designing Women in DTG

From the roots of Puerto Rican immigrants, Virginia Robles-Villlalba reflects a distinct connection to the past.
      Although her print and publishing design work is traditional, clean and un-cluttered, growing up in the slums and projects of New York provides her with a unique cultural, political and economic vision.
READ THIS REPORT Full story : Virginia’s web site
check out these cool fonts and type graphics See some of Virginia’s Print Design

Veerle Pieters : remix

16th Annual Designing Women in DTG

We introduced you to Veerle back in Designing Women 2008, and a lot of water has gone under the bridge. Veerle’s blog became famous around the world for her tutorials — although most of those design links have gone dead, thank goodness her “Creating a ribbon in Adobe Illustrator” tutorial is still live.
      Everything has evolved for Veerle, the design site pushes the envelope on web design, and her Blog continues to be a huge inspiration for millions of pairs-of-eyes from all around the world… having gone through a “v2.0” and now, v3.0
READ THIS REPORT Don’t miss : Veerle’s blog 3.0
check out these cool fonts and type graphics Veerle’s blog 2.0

Gender Studies Symposium

Last year’s surf took us to the Lewis & Clark’s Gender Studies Symposium where students, faculty members, and featured guests lead three days of discussions on topics including how biology influences identity and how science shapes parenthood. Here’s a revisit to that event which took place after our issue …

Designing Women Gallery The 16th Annual Designing Women edition continues with

Designing Women: Jane Seymour
Feature: Designing Women: Jane Seymour
Lydia Leith: Royal Throne Up Sick Bags
Feature: Lydia Leith: Royal ‘Throne Up Sick Bags’

Jessica Hische: Caps to Captivate
Jessica Hische: Caps to Captivate


The Continuing Designing Women Field Trip


Xandra Zamora: calligraphic hands


Carol Kemp: Fresh Typography


Designing Women: Simulating Life

And, thanks for reading

Fred Showker

Don’t forget … we encourage you to share your discoveries with other readers. Just send and email, contribute your own article, join the Design Cafe forums, or follow DTG on Facebook!