Where did the idea for the website, and a directory specifically, come from?

We noticed that a prominent U.S. magazine only hired four female illustrators out of the 55 illustrated covers they commissioned in 2015. So we created the directory to provide an easy way to find talented professional female* illustrators and promote the work of women, women of color, LBTQ+ women and other minority groups of women illustrators. This way there would be no way any publication could ever say they’d hire more artists in these groups “if only they could find them." The directory format is clean and simple. All you need to do is click on their illustration and you are directed to their portfolio of work.

Why was it important to you for illustrators to have the ability to tag themselves and conspicuously self-identify?

It's important that art from all different kinds of people show up on magazine covers, in newspapers, on shirts or signs or wallpaper or whatever. It shows all the different perspectives and life experiences that exist in the world. Art is a powerful tool. It tells stories, begs questions, creates empathy—it opens people up to different ways of being. If an art director is only publishing work made by a certain group of people, it won't reflect the richness of the world in which we now live. These optional tags will help art directors find these women of all backgrounds.

What kind of work goes into running the site? Are there other plans or visions for WWD?

In the first 24 hours of launching the site, we got over 1,200 submissions and since then many hundreds more. We have to look at each one and make sure it fits the criteria for the site: their image of a woman needs to be on a white background, a certain size, and they need to have a professional website. Looking through each of those submissions takes a lot of time, which is why we have the Support page. It’s become a full time job for Wendy and me. We funded the creation of the site out of our own pockets, and we can’t really afford to keep it going on our own. We hope that each illustrator will give a little bit to help us out, as will the art directors and designers who are using it to find illustrators to work with.

On the website, we’re doing monthly features of art directors and editors. We are also organizing events and collaborations. Our first one is at Society of Illustrators next week. Ten women will be giving short slide presentation on the theme of Survival. We’ve also created something called #WWDTogether—every month on a certain day we will all draw together around a theme and share the results by tagging our drawings on Instagram. A curated show of those drawings will be hosted on the site. The first one is on the 21st around the Women’s March. You can read more about it and learn how to participate here. We are really building a strong community of illustrators and the people who hire them.

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