In its inaugural year, Crain’s Detroit Business named Meaghan Barry, co-owner of Unsold Studio in Detroit as one of 29 “Notable Women in Design.”
The award recognizes a selected group of accomplished female leaders in commercial, architectural and industrial design and package, fashion, graphic and web design, said Kelsey Strachan, an integrated marketing manager at Crain’s Detroit Business.
After a nominator submits nominations, nominees have to complete a candidate form. A panel of judges then reviews the applications and determines who best emulates the program’s qualifications. The winning candidates are alerted and then featured in a special editorial feature section of Crain’s weekly paper, said Strachan.
Being selected
“It was such an honor,” Barry said. “I look up to so many of the women on the list. I know them from working in the industry, and to be seen as one of them felt incredible.”
Being selected was a significant moment for Barry to step back and recognize all that she, and her Co-Founder of Unsold Studio, Lillian Crum, have accomplished in the past seven years.
“Hard work often feels invisible and it’s easy to get caught up in a busy work schedule without realizing what you’ve achieved,” said Crum.
“Being named on this list has given Lillian and me a moment to appreciate the hard work and all of the people that have helped us become who we are and our careers,” said Barry.
Seeing all of their work finally being recognized, has only made Barry and Crum want to continue to strive for more, Crum said.
The start
The company was founded in 2013 after Barry and Crum spent a weekend discussing how well they worked and collaborated.
Unsold Studio, helps clients with brand strategy, brand identity, graphic design, and much more. Their goal is to be as flexible and agile as possible when meeting the client’s needs, said Barry.
“That weekend, we started a website with almost nothing on it,” said Barry. “We took some photos of ourselves and used a random word generator to come up with our name, and we just put ourselves out there. We started doing work for friends or friends of friends, and eventually, we gained enough steam.
“We started because we were young twenty-somethings, and we were confident and just thought, why not.”