Born on 5th February 1954, Susan Kare became one of the most promising American artists and graphic designers. People admired many qualities, but she was best known for her simple user interface graphics and fonts for the revolutionary system for the Apple Macintosh from 1983 to 1986. Still, her journey had just begun; she went on and pioneered typography designs for the MAC screens and transformed pixel art because of her graph paper drawings that later evolved to tiny iconic images. She was one of the first employees to be hired by Steve jobs for the company he made, i.e., NeXT, until 1985 when she left Apple, although even today, her command key feature still can be found on Apple keyboards. After which, she became a design consultant for many well-known companies like Microsoft, IBM, and Sony Pictures, and currently, she is working for Niantic Labs. She transformed how millions of people shuffled a deck of cards on their PC when she designed the drag and drop game of solitaire for Windows 3.0. As a consequence of her contributions as a graphic artist and digital designer, she is considered one of the most significant technologists. The New York Museum of Modern Arts has recognized her as a genius.

Born on 30th October 1986, Jessica Walsh is a well-known American designer, art director, illustrator, and educator set in New York. She was a partner at a design studio called Sagmeister & Walsh for ten years until 2019 when she opened up her creative agency named &Walsh. She also has recently been teaching at the School of Visual Arts. Walsh is best known for her brave design experiments, her skill to blend handwork and digital, and her insights in flawlessly blending visuals with her dark attributes. The journey of becoming a designer for Walsh began when she was merely 12 years old and taught herself coding. At such a young age, she created websites and wrote blogs about HTML and CSS during her spare time. The financial success through advertisement revenue from an HTML website that offered free graphic templates for kids created by her led to her attending the Rhode Island School of Design. Her primary focus is branding and websites design; she has helped change public perceptions of many brands, including Frooti, Levis, Adobe, The New York Times, Barneys, Museum of Modern Art, and many more. She has been awarded many awards for her contributions to design, including Forbes ’30 under 30 top creatives designing the future and Ad Age’s ‘Top 10 visual creatives.’

Carolyn Davidson is a graphic designer known most for designing the Nike logo. When she was studying graphic design at Portland State University, Phil Knight, who eventually co-founded Nike, Inc, was teaching an accounting class there during the same time and noticed the immensely talented Carolyn Davidson. He then asked her if she would be willing to design for him at 2$/hr, which is equal to 14$/hr in the current times. Davidson later revealed that Phil Knight loved the Adidas logo and wanted her to create something similar to their stripes. When she handed over her concepts, Phil was not impressed but went with it; she was paid 35$ for this entire project. After which, Davidson went on to work for other clients, but her design for the Nike logo was not forgotten. Later in 1983, after Nike became a massive hit, Phil Knight presented Davidson with a gold ring with her logo on it accompanied by an unspecified number of shares in the company. The swoosh logo made by Davidson checks all the boxes as it is versatile and straightforward at the same time, which is why it is still, even after so much time has passed by is, at the core of Nike’s brand identity.

Deborah Sussman, the pioneer of environmental graphic design, was born on 26th May 1931 was an American designer. Her designs were so brilliant that they were built into the architecture and public spaces. She was born in Brooklyn and was a student at Bard, Black Mountain College, and later on went to IIT, during 1953-1957 and 1961-1967 she worked for Eames Office prior to opening her designing firm in 1968. She collaborated with her husband in the year 1980, architect and urban planner Paul Prejza, whom she married in 1972 and established Sussman/Prejza. Some of her most memorable and noteworthy design work was done for the 1984 Olympic Games held in Los Angeles. This project put Sussman’s signature fearless ‘Supergraphics’ designs on the map and was displayed to be admired by the entire world. The designs she created had a life of their own, were more prominent than the architecture, and went above and beyond the ceiling of our imagination. The work that she did for the Olympics helped her bag huge clients like Disney, McCaw Hall, Seattle Opera, Hasbro, and The City of Santa Monica. Sussman has been awarded many well-deserved awards, namely the AIGA medal in 2004, SEGD’s Golden Arrow Award in 2006, and many more prestigious honors.

This is a predominantly male-dominated society, but many females like the above have left a mark and have played a significant role in carving the branding industry. Now 63%, i.e., most graphic designers working in the industry are women compared to merely 37% of males; still, the industry has failed to safeguard itself from sexism and outdated gender role expectations. The history of designing involves both men and women and why it is still difficult for women to be treated as equals.