Video: Masters of Design Panel

Filmed on: October 15, 2010

About this video

The 2010 “Masters of Design”—Gadi Amit, CEO of the industrial design firm NewDealDesign; Bjarke Ingels, founder of the architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG); and Fiona Morrisson, director of brand and advertising at JetBlue—join in an engaging conversation about design’s impact on business innovation with Fast Company editor Linda Tischler.

Speaker bio

Gadi Amit is the president of NewDealDesign LLC, a strategic design studio in San Francisco. Founded in 2000, NewDealDesign has worked with such clients as Better Place, Sling Media, Palm, Dell, Microsoft, Verizon and Fujitsu, among others, and has won more than 80 design awards. Used both as a progressive design philosophy as well a socially-responsible motto, design's real world success is seen as the core motivation for Amit and the NewDeal team. Born and educated in Israel, Amit moved to California in 1993. Prior to founding NewDealDesign, he was vice president of design at frogdesign in San Francisco.

After co-founding PLOT Architects in 2001 and working at OMA in Rotterdam, Bjarke Ingels started Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) in 2005. With many award-winning design projects and buildings under his belt, Ingels has developed an international reputation as a member of a new generation of architects whose work combines shrewd analysis, playful experimentation, social responsibility and humor. In 2004 he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for the Stavanger Concert House, and the following year he received the Forum AID Award for the VM Houses. Since its completion, The Mountain, a Copenhagen apartment complex, has received numerous awards including the World Architecture Festival Housing Award, Forum AID Award and the MIPIM Residential Development Award. Alongside his architectural practice, Ingels has been active as a visiting professor at Rice University’s School of Architecture and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Ingels is currently a visiting professor at Harvard University where he is teaching with the Business School and the Graduate School of Design.

Fiona Morrisson is JetBlue's director of brand and advertising. While not a designer in the traditional sense, Morrison is JetBlue's design champion and strategist, overseeing the branding and design strategy for the company and promoting human-centered design in every aspect of JetBlue's business. Born and raised in Australia, Morrisson worked in televsion production in Japan and studied journalism before pursuing public relations for the travel industry. She joined JetBlue, still in its infancy, in 2000, as director of corporate communications, and helped build JetBlue into one of the fastest growing airlines in the United States. After six years at the company, she took a brief hiatus but happily returned to JetBlue in 2007 to take the lead on the development of the airline's widely celebrated Terminal 5 at JFK Airport. Under Morrisson's guidance, JetBlue has been recognized with numerous awards and mentions including the Association of Travel Marketing Executives Atlas Award for best brand, Business Week's Annual Design Award and the 2009 AIGA Corporate Leadership Award. The company has been named “#1 Airline Brand“ by Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index eight of the past nine years.