Paulina Paige Ortega is a Designer & Creative Director, founder of the Sydney-based design practice Actuel Studio and the soon-to-launch publication PERSONA. Drawn to design as a way of shaping how we experience the world, her work reflects an appreciation for ideas that move fluidly across disciplines. For this edition of Table Talk, she shares three women whose work has profoundly influenced her creative practice.

I’ve been a designer and art/creative director for over 15 years now, and it’s always baffled me how little we talked about and celebrated the work of female designers (both back in the day when I was in design school, and even well into my life as a professional).

Eileen Gray

Her work is both austere in its form and inviting in its simplicity. I had the pleasure of visiting E1027 a few years ago, the summer house she built for herself in the South of France, next to her friend and rival Le Corbusier’s home. It was such a beautiful all-encompassing piece of work to behold. From the architecture of the house itself, to every piece of furniture (like the gorgeous satellite vanity mirror and the bespoke book surface that articulated as you lounged), even down to the custom rugs, she’s a designer who was not intimated by different mediums of expression. Her work across various disciplines of design is endlessly inspiring to me.I loved the fullness of her vision, a life well articulated through design.

Gae Aulenti

I love Gae Aulenti’s work. It’s the perfect balance of whimsy and practicality, playful and sleek, organic and structured. She’s one of the few heavy-hitting names from the Italian modernist movement, and with good reason. A particular favorite of mine is the space she designed for Olivetti showroom in Paris in the late 60s. It’s a space that would feel so fresh and new, even today. She also designed my dream outdoor furniture set, which was used in the 1969 movie, La Piscine. So summery, light, and playful, but still endlessly chic and simple.

Paula Scher

Possibly the first woman in my direct field of design (graphic) whose work I came to know well. Paula has such a dynamic and fascinating way of using typography. And she’s someone who excels at both full-tilt maximalism as well as the purity of minimalism. She made these incredible maps of New York made entirely out of typography, which showed me letters could break out of their intended, standard manner of use. I also really appreciate how thoughtful her simpler, more minimalist works are, like the Citibank logo (which, as the urban legend goes, she drew on the spot on a table napkin) and her most recent, recognisable work, the book cover for Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act.