Bios for 2009 nominees

Julie Beeler is co-founder and studio director of Second Story, a distinguished creator of informative and entertaining interactive experiences, including media-rich storytelling presentations and interpretive installations. With a background in visual design, art history and the liberal arts, she leads the studio in shaping unique, innovative, interactive experiences that peak curiosity, spur discovery and inspire audiences. Beeler has defined and sustained an approach to interactive media design that focuses on reaching diverse audiences while pushing the limits of technological innovation. From concept through completion, she interacts with various industry disciplines, guiding the studio to realize holistic approaches to successful projects.

Since 1994, Second Story has been recognized as a leader in both online and on-site interactive media design. Beeler has collaborated with many of the world’s outstanding cultural institutions, such as the Smithsonian, Library of Congress and National Geographic, to create compelling projects that have been featured in the popular press and in dozens of books. The studio’s pioneering work blending interactive art, entertainment, and education has garnered many of the industry’s top interactive design awards, including recognition in the National Design Awards. Beeler is a frequent speaker at various conferences and schools across the country on topics ranging from interactive design methodologies to usability and the marriage of rich content and technology.

Shelley Evenson is an associate professor teaching interaction design in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University, where she is also the director of graduate studies. Evenson teaches courses in designing conceptual models, interaction and service design, and collaborates with colleagues from the Tepper School of Business and the Human Computer Interaction Institute. Her most recent efforts are focused on bringing her expertise in product and interaction design to designing for services. Recent projects include collaborating with GM, Intel, Microsoft and Motorola. Evenson worked with her students to develop Carnegie Mellon’s Emergence conference and co-chaired the 2007 Art and Science of Service conference held at Carnegie Mellon University.

Before joining the faculty at Carnegie Mellon, Evenson worked for more than 25 years in multidisciplinary consulting practices. As a co-founder of seeSpace, an experience strategy firm; VP at Fitch; and chief experience strategist for Scient, she has worked with clients such as Apple, Bank of Montreal, Kodak, Motorola, Texas Instruments, Williamsburg Institute and Xerox on a wide variety of design and development projects. Evenson was also the 1997–1998 Nierenberg Chair of Design, a visiting professorship offered to an outstanding individual who has achieved national or international prominence in design.

Zia Khan is the founder and principal of Lucid Partners, a communication design firm in Atlanta. Founded in 1994, his firm has served clients such as AT&T, Coca-Cola, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Home Depot and Mohawk Industries, on engagements ranging from brand identity to stakeholder communication. In his 20-plus years as a designer Khan’s work has been recognized by Communication Arts, Black Book AR100, HOW and Graphic Design USA, and received several awards, including the prestigious Mohawk Show Award of Excellence.

Born and raised in Bangalore, India, his nontraditional route to the design profession included undergraduate studies in physics and geology; later on, he graduated from the Portfolio Center, in Atlanta. In recent years, Khan has developed a deep interest in issues at the intersection of business and design. One notable achievement during his two terms on the AIGA Atlanta chapter’s board as the business outreach chair was the creation of the Brand Academy program—an executive course produced in partnership with the Emory University Business School. He has also served as adjunct professor at the Atlanta College of Art and currently teaches at the Portfolio Center.

Jamie Koval is a principal and president of VSA Partners, a strategic design and brand consultancy with offices in Chicago, New York and Minneapolis. Since 1990, he has been instrumental in shaping VSA’s multidisciplinary approach to brand and business communications, including work in identity, corporate reputation, interiors and web. VSA’s clients include BP, Harley-Davidson, IBM, GE, Mohawk Fine Papers and Nike. Some of Koval’s most notable achievements have been leading the visual identity for the Dalai Lama’s visit to Millennium Park, the 2016 Chicago Olympic bid and the symbol “Jack” for Cingular Wireless.

Koval’s work has been internationally recognized by more than 50 competitions and designations including ACD, AIGA, AR100, British Design Annual, Communication Arts, Graphis, I.D., the Los Angeles and New York Art Directors Clubs and the Type Directors Club. In addition, his work is in the permanent collection in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. He is a frequent lecturer and has taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

In addition, Koval has donated his time to several not-for-profit organizations including Anderson Ranch Art Center, Dance Aspen and the Northern Suburban Special Education District.

Debbie Millman is president of the design division at Sterling Brands and teaches at the School of Visual Arts and Fashion Institute of Technology. Millman is also an author on the design blog Speak Up, a contributing editor at Print magazine, and she hosts an internet radio show on the Voice America Business network titled Design Matters. Her first book, How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer, was published by Allworth Press in 2007; her second book, Essential Principles of Graphic Design, was published by Rotovision in 2008; and she is currently working on a collection of illustrated essays titled Look Both Ways, which will be published in fall 2009. She has served on the national board for the last three years; prior to that she served on the New York chapter board where she worked as a mentor at the High School of Art and Design.

Angela Shen-Hsieh pursues forms of communication and information delivery that fascinate, inform and prompt people to think. Having graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1991, she is inspired by her training in architecture and a vision for the way in which design can dramatically improve the quality of our lives. Through her company, Visual i|o, her work explodes the boundaries of how people interact with the increasingly overwhelming amounts of data now accessible. Visual i|o is a venture-backed data visualization software company founded in 2002. Visual i|o focuses on “the last 18 inches”—getting data from the computer screen into the human mind—bridging the divide between raw data and actionable meaning through an entirely new graphical language for navigating and interpreting data.

Before founding Visual i|o, Shen-Hsieh founded a women’s clothing company called Edits. Designing and developing the Edits line, Shen-Hsieh honed her business edge and combined it with the same passion for visual communication and innovative design.

Her work has been published in Metropolis, Harvard Design Magazine, eDesign Magazine, New Media Creative and other trade and design publications. In its June 2004 Design issue, Fast Company profiled her as one of four rising stars “charting the future” of business and design innovation. In 2006, she was chosen by BusinessWeek as one of 10 “cutting edge designers pushing the limits of design.”

Shen-Hsieh holds a Master of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a BA from Barnard College of Columbia University. She sits on several not-for-profit boards, and lectures frequently on issues related to design, business and data visualization.

Lynda Weinman worked as a Hollywood animator and designer until she discovered computers in 1982. Inspired by the potential of the emerging graphics software industry, she shifted her focus from working with traditional media and analog cameras to using computers for imaging, motion graphics and interactive design. Self-taught, she started her own business out of her garage, and produced animation on early personal computers, working as an independent contractor for clients such as Disney and Apple. She started writing articles for magazines in 1985, and began speaking at conferences about how computer graphics were transforming the animation and design industries. Weinman became a full-time teacher and writer after becoming a mom in 1989, and went on to teach at Art Center College of Design, American Film Institute, San Francisco State University’s Multimedia Studies Program, UCLA Extension and the Kodak Center for Creative Imaging.

In 1995, Weinman wrote the first book on web design, called Designing Web Graphics (now in its fourth edition), which became a national and international bestseller. She became known for her easy-to-understand, approachable and generous teaching style. Weinman left her teaching posts to start the world’s first web design school with her husband and partner, Bruce Heavin. After the dot-com crash and 9/11, she took her lessons online and created a subscription service that hosts a library of courses. Today, her company—lynda.com, Inc.—publishes the work of more than 100 trainers on hundreds of software and design topics, and has created a library of more than 35,000 online video tutorials, available for an affordable price to anyone who wants to learn or improve software skills. With tens of thousands of loyal subscribers to its Online Training Library®, lynda.com has become a leading force in the software training industry. Headquartered in Ventura, California, lynda.com celebrated 10 years online in 2005.