Reading List: Inspiring Women Edition

As we celebrate the achievements of women this month, we wanted to take a minute to shine the spotlight on some of the talented women we’ve featured on the Design Pool blog. If you want to read about inspiring women, here is a round up of some of our faves that we’ve covered.

Women who can help you grow your business:

In our day-to-day, we interact with a lot of different people. We like to introduce them to you when we think they’re business would be useful to our audience of creative people. Here are a few we talked to in the last year.

Elana Gaines of Afternoon Creative hosts the weekly Designer’s Clubhouse, a group of professionals who connect to network and collaborate.

Dayna Hartford owns Printivize with her husband, a small print shop offering a range of different products. She is also a talented surface designer and has a line of her own patterns inspired by New England towns.

Nicole Lashae (Ben) Hall is the owner of Thrive in Design, a consulting company that focuses on branding for design-focused brands. She also hosts a podcast and interviews industry leaders. (An episode with Kristen is coming up!)

Women who are trendspotters and trendsetters:

Periodically, we talk to interior designers about their process, a particular project, or trends they’re seeing in their corner of the industry. (Sometimes all three!) Here are a few of our favorite interviews that flew under the radar.

One of our recent favorites was with interior designer My Nguyen who designs interiors for cruise ships.

Interior designer Aga Artka believes every business has a story to tell. Her passion for branding informs her interior design work, especially in this historical space she highlights.

Fashion designer Koskia Bello gave us insight into her process designing for golfware company, Greg Norman.

Women who opened doors for the rest of us:

During the early days of the pandemic, Kristen read a book about the women codebreakers who broke down barriers for women in science. That one book inspired an entire collection of patterns, The Cryptology Collection. This collection won a HiP Award at NeoCon 2021 and was also named a Metropolis Likes that year. Kristen has continued to play with this concept of codes and codebreaking in more patterns and her personal artwork.

We’ve written tons of blog posts about Elizebeth and the women who followed in her footsteps. Here are a few of our faves:

First, get to know Elizebeth Smith Friedman.

A couple of years ago we highlighted more of the women cryptologists in this post for International Women’s Day.

Try your hand at codebreaking!

Women of Design Pool:

Design Pool is 100% woman-owned and operated. Get to know our team.

Our founder, Kristen Dettoni, launched Design Pool in 2019 as a way to make digital, on-demand printing accessible to interior designers. She had a successful career in the textile industry before deciding it was time to start her own company. Get to know Kristen better.

Our Director of Marketing & Communications, Kristin Crane, joined Design Pool in 2020. She has a background in woven textile design and marketing for small businesses. Get to know Kristin better.

Cheers to all the women running their own companies and inspiring the next generation of women entrepreneurs!