A glossy overview of some of the worthy women in design getting praise. This is informative in it's way but could have been so much more. It wasn't quite what I was expecting and to me felt like a really informative coffee table book that also managed to put a point across but it just didn't quite hit the mark.

Terrific read inspirational informative.Wonderful lok at women in all forms of design.A book I will be recommending Perfect for classroom discussions.#netgalley#johnhuntbooks

Looking for a bit of inspiration when you're out creating and being your bad-ass self? "Women in Design" is a well laid out, pretty little book that features 100 women and their contributions to design. It doesn't just cover fashion — which is so often the default for featuring women designers — but also architecture, furniture, product, and graphic design.

I enjoyed reading this one and will keep it handy for when I need a spark of motivation as I'm creating and designing my own projects.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It is both informative and educational whilst also being inspiring and creative. It is a fabulous book and I would definitely recommend it.

While this book is a fascinating introduction to women designers, it has many flaws.

First off, and very off-putting, is the extreme feminist and socialist viewpoint of the authors. The only time political views are mentioned is if the woman in question is Socialist and then it is approvingly. With only one page of text per designer is this necessary? Although many of the designers profiled had strong working relationships with their husbands or lovers, the authors only portray one designer who stopped designing for marriage, dismissing her decision to focus on marriage and family as unworthy.

But if you look at the designers described here who were fueled creatively by their marriages and by their lives as wives and mothers, you get a very different and less politically-correct feminist view.

Secondly, the book is far too European-centric. Although there are several American designers included, an area where American women have been ground-breaking, fashion, has none of them included. Another area where women have made significant contributions, advertising, has only one AD, a European, included.

Finally, the book is not very complete. While the pictures included for each designer give the reader a feel for their work, all too often the pieces mentioned in the text are not pictured. This leaves the reader on his own searching for information.

It could have been so much better.

Women in Design: From Aino Aalto to Eva Zeisel is a historical survey with small bios for over 100 women in design from fashion to textiles, from interiors and architecture to graphics. Released 29th Oct 2019 by Laurence King, it's 256 pages and available in hardcover format.

This is a resource rich book full of historical photos and information about iconic design and the artists and innovators who originated them. At a rough count, there were 106 short bios with generous numbers of well curated photos and illustrations. The emphasis is on European and North American designers; I believe there are two or three Asian designers included. I didn't see this as an intentional slight, but that the majority of the aesthetic of the book covers the Euro/American design history.

Each bio includes a small cameo header pic of the artist designer, a divider bar with their field of expertise and active years, followed by their vital info (nationality, birth and if applicable death dates). The bios include career highlight and pictures of their innovations. These are well written and many have amusing anecdotes included. (Mimi Vandermolen, a car designer, once forced her male colleagues to wear fake fingernails to prove a point about the difficulty of the knobs and handles in current car design. She also apparently threatened to make them wear skirts to see the difficulty of entering and exiting vehicles).

The book includes an extensive reference and links list along with a cross referenced index. I received an eARC of the book, and found the typesetting contrast a little off, but I suspect that won't be a problem in the final print version of the book (which is 9x11.5" in size). I was previously unfamiliar with many of the names included, though there were many I did recognize. Lots of scope for further reading here.

Five stars. It would have been nice to have a broader, more world-spanning emphasis, but the author/editors specifically addressed the curating process in the introduction.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Disclaimer I received a copy as an ARC via NetGalley

I’m very conflicted about this book.
I was prepared to love this book. I don’t think there are many compiled books of women in design. I definitely don’t remember any from studying design.The facts and educational presentation are solid, detailed and interesting.

But how can any author team in this day in age try to cover any subject matter without representing the people of color in that field. There are only 5 POC women designers out of the 100+ featured in this book. That was extremely disappointing and frustrating to me, that the authors practiced exclusion by omission. It is a very white-washed and Eurocentric view of women in design. The narrow minded focus of this book doesn’t move the conversation forward or help people educate themselves further.

This book has women from different time periods and types of design. From fashion to interiors to graphics. I teach Fashion and Interior Design classes and am adding this book as a resource. I love it.

Women in Design is a book that should have been written decades ago with updates ever since. It gives a clear overview of the influence of women in our day-t0-day lives and, even though I am a former art student, with a decent knowledge of architectural, graphic and furniture design, it took me by surprise that women designed some of the most famous icons. Women in Design give those designers the recognition they deserve!
This book should be in the library of every design school or design lover. It covers everything from Fashion and textile to ceramics, from architecture, furniture, and graphic design. It isn't a complete overview, and I would love to add the word yet to it because I sincerely hope that Charlotte and Clementine Fiell will continue to write about the influence of Women in Design.