Design systems grew out of a need to build consistent, cohesive visual experiences across devices and platforms, and to centralize and consolidate design efforts. While they create a better user experience, increase the efficiency of teams, and improve the quality of products, design systems need to be more than just inventories and deliverables if they are to be successful.

Jina will share her thoughts on using design systems to empower and strengthen your creativity while still keeping its goals of scale, maintainability, and efficiency at heart. Jina Anne is a design systems advocate and coach. At Opvitae, she’s an advisory board member focused on design.

At Amazon, Jina was Senior Design Systems Lead. At Salesforce, she was Lead Designer on the Lightning Design System. She led the CSS architecture and style guide for the Apple Online Store. She’s also worked at GitHub, Engine Yard, Crush + Lovely, and Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, and more. She developed projects with W3C, Mass.gov, FedEx, and more. Jina organizes the premiere design systems conference, Clarity. She founded Design Systems Coalition and its inaugural San Francisco chapter. She runs the Design Systems Slack. And she’s the Sass core team designer.

Jina coauthored Design Systems Handbook, Fancy Form Design, and The Art & Science of CSS. She’s published several articles. She’s spoken at conferences including Adobe MAX. Print Magazine featured Jina as a leading San Francisco creative. Keep the inspiration going and join us for #AIGADesignConf 2020 in Pittsburgh.

Ashleigh Axios discusses the importance of personal and professional values and how it shapes the culture around us.

Ashleigh Axios is an international speaker, strategic creative, and an advocate for design's ability to break barriers and create positive social change. She leads The Studio, where she functions as an executive creative director for Automattic, a company with the mission to democratize publishing and commerce. She is guiding the formation of the inclusion portion of Automattic’s first design language, Muriel — establishing how inclusion can be a key ingredient for the success of digital products and communications. She is an executive board member for AIGA, the professional association of design, and an editorial board member for Design Observer. Ashleigh served as the creative director and a digital strategist for the Obama White House, bridging two presidential terms, in the first-ever Office of Digital Strategy. She is also the president emeritus of AIGA Washington D.C., where she formed DotGovDesign, an initiative and conference connecting and empowering government designers. She is a graduate from, and a current alumni advisor to, Rhode Island School of Design.

Women’s pleasure has long been stigmatized — wrapped up in social constructs and gendered expectations. So designing a line of sex toys for women was anything but an easy journey. Ti Chang, industrial designer and co-founder of luxury sex toy brand CRAVE, discusses the ups, downs and in-betweens of trying to bust through stigma and start conversations using innovative design as the centerpiece. You will hear her personal story from being a designer to a sex toy entrepreneur and advocate for designing for women, and how she hustled her way from the corporate world to bootstrapping her company. She will share her journey of navigating traditional employment, building a company, and designing for social change.

Ti Chang is an industrial designer and entrepreneur passionate about designing products for women. She currently leads the concept and design for products at Crave, a San Francisco–based company specializing in discreet luxury sex toys. Its won numerous awards including Red Dot, IDEA, and Good Design. Chang founded INCOQNITO, a line of intimate accessories that double as fashionable jewelry, which was then acquired by Crave in 2011. She is best known for the design of Vesper, a vibrator necklace, a celebrated and innovative design that disrupted the adult toy industry. She currently chairs the San Francisco chapter of IDSA and Women in Design SF.

Earlier, Chang held positions with major consumer brands, including Trek Bicycle and Goody Products. She holds an M.A. in design products from Royal College of Art in London and a B.S. in industrial design from Georgia Institute of Technology. Chang grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and now enjoys life and work in San Francisco.

A.I. and machine learning are set to define the next era of digital products—and of our work. Discover your own influential role, and learn to handle this powerful new design material with care and respect. This lively and inspiring talk explores how to use machine-generated content, insight, and interaction in your everyday work. Discover how to refit familiar design process to work with the grain of the algorithm, and to help the machines solve real problems without creating new ones.

Josh Clark is a UX design leader who helps organizations build products for what's next. He is founder of Big Medium, a New York design studio specializing in future-friendly interfaces for artificial intelligence, connected devices, and the web. Josh has written several books, including Designing for Touch and Tapworthy. He speaks around the world about what’s next for digital interfaces.

We’ve become an industry of blamers. We blame our clients for thrusting on us untenable and unfair contractual terms, for art directing us and for not having a clear decision-making process. We blame our clients when they don’t meet deadlines, or when they request ever increasing and unreasonably short timelines. And, we blame our clients for not respecting our values and demanding lower and lower fees. I believe most of this is within our control and that we need to move beyond the blame game and take more accountability for the decisions we make, how we respond to each situation, and the overall current state of our business practices and the industry overall. This short talk is meant to be a rallying cry for us to start understanding that how we work with one client reflects on our entire industry and will highlight some of the more damaging practices. If we don’t start pushing back more often then our continued inaction will eventually lead to long-term and negative impact on the value and, potentially, the sustainability of our industry overall. We must choose to control our own actions and shift our focus inward, as individuals, as creative businesses and as an industry overall. This talk will highlight key strategies for rethinking how we engage with, and even train and educate, our clients.

Nathan Curtis explores the qualities of well-crafted systems and how they influence digital experiences.

Nathan Curtis co-founded EightShapes with Dan Brown in 2006. He's passionate about information architecture, UX, front-end dev, and leads design systems consulting at EightShapes. He wrote Modular Web Design in 2009, blogs frequently on Medium.com, and speaks regularly at events worldwide.

Nathan has worked with design systems teams at Google, REI, Fidelity, Marriott, Cisco, Capital One, Yahoo, Sprint, Sun Microsystems, Morningstar, Target, NetApp, USAC, Key Bank, Liberty Mutual, IDEXX, Discovery Education, Carmax, Citi, Hudl, Automattic, Wells Fargo, and Wikia.

Let’s take a look at what's broken in coding culture, how we got there, and how to fix the internet's creative culture.

Anil Dash is the CEO of Glitch, the creative community where millions of people collaboratively create and share apps. Anil is one of the most prominent advocates for ethical and inclusive technology, and hosts Function, a Vox Media podcast exploring how tech shapes culture. He advised the Obama White House’s Office of Digital Strategy, was formerly a contributing editor of Wired, and was described by The New Yorker as a “blogging pioneer” for his Webby-recognized personal website. Anil collaborated with Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda to create one of the most popular Spotify playlists of 2018, and @anildash is the only Twitter account ever re-tweeted by both Bill Gates and Prince, succinctly encapsulating Anil’s interests.

What would you do if you could not fail? This is an interactive talk on how to break free of your “limiting beliefs” and how to conquer your critical inner voice. Includes exercises—an examination on how we assign meaning to events and how we can transform negative events into positive outcomes.

Chris Do is an Emmy Award–winning designer, director, strategist, lecturer consultant, and entrepreneur. For the last two decades, he has run the Santa Monica–based motion-design and branding agency Blind, working for iconic brands such as Nike, Xbox, Sony, and Honda. Having taught for over 15 years at ArtCenter College of Design, Do scaled his teaching efforts and founded the Futur, an online content and education platform. He has produced over 500 YouTube videos on design, branding, business, and UX, and has 300K subscribers from all over the globe.

Do currently serves as the chairman of the board for the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation, and has also served as an advisory board member for AIGA/LA, the Emmys’ Motion & Title Design Peer Group, the Otis College of Art and Design Board of Governors, Santa Monica College, and Woodbury University. His firm’s work has been recognized by The Webby Awards, Communication Arts, The One Show, LA Weekly, Type Directors Club, Art Directors Club, and Print among others.

In this talk, Steph shares how a global brand pioneered emotionally compelling AI design that impacted culture on a global scale.

Steph Hay is VP of Conversational AI Design and Integrated Experiences at Capital One, where she leads a team of human-centered designers who specialize in AI, ML, and ecosystem products. Her work includes Eno, Capital One's gender-neutral intelligent assistant, plus several internal platforms aimed at connecting people to relevant contextual data. Prior to joining Capital One, Steph pioneered Lean Content testing and co-founded FastCustomer, Work Design Magazine, and onenicething.com. An Ohio native, Steph loves video games, CrossFit, and BBC programs.

In this antidote to a “quit your job and do what you love” talk, Jessica explains that the key to answering the question we’ve all been asked since we were little—”What you want to be when you grow up?”—is finding out who you are in the first place. And discovering that “who you are” is never static—it shifts and transforms over and over again as you grow, change, mature, hormonally implode, etc. She’ll share transformative personal experiences that have changed how she approaches work, walk through how she balances parenting and professional life, and talk about why we should celebrate who we are and what we’re capable of at every stage—from the naive beginner to the seasoned pro.

Jessica Hische is a lettering artist and author working in San Francisco. She has had the pleasure of working for clients including Wes Anderson, The United States Postal Service, “The New York Times,” and Penguin Books. Her work has been featured in design and illustration annuals in the U.S. and internationally. She’s been named a “Print” magazine New Visual Artist (2009), as well as one of the “Forbes” 30 Under 30 in Art and Design, ADC Young Guns, and “Graphic Design USA” People to Watch.

Jennifer will share development process of Airbnb's illustrative aesthetics, describing philosophies on color, representation, and editorial voice. You’ll even hear how superstitions helped localize the style for Airbnb in China.

Jennifer Hom has been illustrating for tech for the better part of a decade. Beginning her career as a Google Doodler for 6.5 years, she's since moved from drawing/animating/carving whimsical logos to building illustration systems. In 2016 she joined Uber to design their illustration style and their first brand illustration team. Since then, she's taken on her current role as the Head of Illustration at Airbnb and tasked to redesign their illustration system from the ground up, she's created a style centered on honesty, diversity, and own-ability

Liz discusses how the things that disabled people radically fight for become the things that are empathetically done for us.

Liz Jackson is the founder of The Disabled List, which is a disability-led, self advocacy organization that is creating opportunities in design by integrating specific, disability-led ways of knowing into design pedagogy and practice. The Disabled List is committed to partnering disabled creatives with top design studios and creative spaces for three-month fellowships through a program called The WITH Fellowship.

www.disabledlist.org

Most organizations (in the west) now have policies related to inclusion and diversity. Most public buildings (in the west) have been built using universal design principles. There’s only one frontier left for any consensus on inclusive design. The web (in the west). Why is accessibility not the baseline at the moment and how can we make it so?

Creative professionals have the skills needed to be great negotiators and run great businesses. Katie will show you how to use your creative skills to solve intimidating business conflicts and talk about the importance of sharing what you learn — the good and the bad — with your communities.

Katie Lane helps creators feel invincible. Since 2009, Katie has been teaching creative professionals how contracts work, what copyright law is, and how to handle client demands with ease. Drawing on her background in theatre, years of experience negotiating multi-million dollar deals, and a deep affection for all things nerdy, Katie teaches creators how to negotiate with confidence and calm.

Katie runs her own legal practice in Portland, Oregon, serving the needs of comic book creators, illustrators, game designers, and freelance writers. She currently serves as the Treasurer for AIGA Portland.

Alexis Lloyd is a design, UX, and product leader whose work focuses on creating experiences that push the boundaries of how we engage with information. She is currently the head of Design Innovation at Automattic, and has previously served as chief design officer at Axios and creative director of The New York Times R&D Lab. Lloyd’s work on the leading edge of design, technology, and UX has been presented internationally in major publications, conferences, and museums.

Roman Mars welcomes the AIGA Design Conference audience with a short story about Friedrich Fröbel.

Roman Mars, creator and host of the popular design podcast 99% Invisible, returns to host general sessions on the mainstage. Expect Roman to facilitate insightful conversations with the speakers after their presentations and to offer his trademark thought-provoking commentary. Put a face to the voice you’ve been listening to for years.

The approach to design solutions can feel quite different from one financial institution or business to another. Hear Roman Mars explain what's particularly interesting about check cashing stores.

Roman Mars, creator and host of the popular design podcast 99% Invisible, returns to host general sessions on the mainstage. Expect Roman to facilitate insightful conversations with the speakers after their presentations and to offer his trademark thought-provoking commentary. Put a face to the voice you’ve been listening to for years.

Roman Mars explains why US currency design is so flawed. Roman Mars, creator and host of the popular design podcast 99% Invisible, returns to host general sessions on the mainstage. Expect Roman to facilitate insightful conversations with the speakers after their presentations and to offer his trademark thought-provoking commentary. Put a face to the voice you’ve been listening to for years.

Psychologists refer to the “Scarcity Mindset” as a belief that there is only a finite amount of resources which encourages the behavior that anything you have you must hold on to it. Though the scarcity mindset is often used to describe economic and sociological behaviors, this talk will look at the scarcity mindset through the lens game theory. This will be a time to reflect on how we may ascribe to the belief that there isn’t enough to go around and examine how we may exhibit these behaviors, so that we can develop ways to create more abundance in ourselves and our community.

Crystal is a software Consultant at Slalom, a co-organizer of the Strange Loop Conference, and diversity in tech & business advocate.

As a Detroit Public Schools graduate, Crystal is passionate about equal access to education at all levels. She started her career in teaching in St. Louis, MO as a 2010 Teach For America Corps Member and taught middle school math in St. Louis Public Schools for four years. After her time in the classroom, she wanted to explore a career that would allow her to bring together her love for creativity, science, and community — technology was just that!

Bobby C Martin Jr. introduces the creative minds speaking in this year's branding symposia: Andrew Merriam, Director of Business Development at .design; Forest Young, Global Principal at Wolff Olins; Debbie Millman, Chair, Masters in Branding, School of Visuals Arts; and Noreen Morioka & Nicole Jacek, Co-Heads of Design at Wieden + Kennedy.

As a founding partner, Bobby C. Martin Jr. guides OCD’s culture and sets the relentless standard of design and vision for the company. Since founding the branding and design agency with Jennifer Kinon, he has partnered with a range of clients, including Girl Scouts of the USA, Dartmouth College, The New York Times, the NBA, and The Studio Museum in Harlem.

Prior to OCD, Martin led an internal design team in London for Nokia, where he oversaw brand identity across their global packaging. He also served as design director of Jazz at Lincoln Center where he worked with Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis to bring the brand to life and reach new audiences. Recently named by Fast Company as one of the “Most Creative People in Business,” he is a board member of the Type Directors Club. Martin earned an M.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts, where he is now a faculty member.

Join Noreen Morioka and Nicole Jacek for a discussion on how curiosity fuels creativity and their approach to design at the global creative agency, Wieden+Kennedy.

Noreen Morioka and Nicole Jacek are the new co-heads of Wieden + Kennedy design. Together, they lead the hundred-plus employees of the design studio located at the agency’s Portland headquarters. Noreen most recently served as chief creative officer for San Francisco-based luxury skincare line Tatcha while Nicole previously ran the design agency NJ(L.A.). Noreen calls the design studio “the agency’s secret weapon. Earlier in her career, Nicole worked at prominent design firms including Sagmeister & Walsh and karlssonwilker. Noreen was a co-founder and spent 25 years at AdamsMorioka, partnering with Sean Adams, and also served in top roles in AIGA LA, receiving the AIGA Medal in 2014.

Design systems are built on top of many other systems, and each part has to be designed in context with the rest. Many people don't start creating a design system with a clean slate. We're oDesign systems are built on top of many other systems, and each part has to be designed in context with the rest. Many people don't start creating a design system with a clean slate. We're often starting with something already designed, code already deployed, and customers already using interfaces. Over time, design decisions lose their purpose as the number of people who've worked on a single page grows, and the code behind the UI has been iterated on many times. This means working on design systems in not just designing the system itself, but also creating order from chaos. Diana is a designer who specializes in design systems. At GitHub she leads their design operations team, and shapes the direction of their open-source design system—Primer. Previously, Diana helped build Etsy's design system and seller tools, cofounded a conference and network for Australian government web developers, and lead several social change and environmental design projects. Diana founded the NYC chapter of the Design Systems Coalition which has successfully held professional meetups and social gatherings for the past 3 years. Diana writes and speaks about design, code, and working with people. She coauthored the Design Systems Handbook, and speaks internationally at conferences including CSS Conf, Design Systems London, and Clarity. ften starting with something already designed, code already deployed, and customers already using interfaces. Over time, design decisions lose their purpose as the number of people who've worked on a single page grows, and the code behind the UI has been iterated on many times. This means working on design systems in not just designing the system itself, but also creating order from chaos.

Diana is a designer who specializes in design systems. At GitHub she leads their design operations team, and shapes the direction of their open-source design system—Primer. Previously, Diana helped build Etsy's design system and seller tools, cofounded a conference and network for Australian government web developers, and lead several social change and environmental design projects.

Diana founded the NYC chapter of the Design Systems Coalition which has successfully held professional meetups and social gatherings for the past 3 years. Diana writes and speaks about design, code, and working with people. She coauthored the Design Systems Handbook, and speaks internationally at conferences including CSS Conf, Design Systems London, and Clarity.

For 20 years, Debbie was the President of Sterling Brands, one of the world’s leading branding consultancies. She arrived there in 1995 when the company was two years old and had 15 employees in one office. Under her leadership, Sterling grew to 150 employees in five offices and she was instrumental in the firm’s acquisition by Omnicom in 2008. Omnicom is one of the world’s largest holding companies. While their she worked on the logo and brand identity for Burger King, Hershey’s, Haagen Dazs, Tropicana, Star Wars, and the No More movement.

Debbie is President Emeritus of AIGA, one of five women to hold the position in the organization’s 100-year history and an AIGA Medalist.

Hollywood is a world of adventure and intrigue, comedy and tragedy. And that’s what a designer’s life in the entertainment industry can be like as well. In 2010 Pash closed his design firm and moved in-house at The Walt Disney Company, where he oversaw brand and design at ABC. He recently moved to Apple, where he has the same role in their new entertainment division. Join him as he gives you a close up on this crazy and exciting industry, and shows why for designers there’s no business like show business.

Pash Pashkow is a designer, brand strategist, and educator. He currently works at Apple, where he oversees brand and design in their new original content division.

For eight years prior he was VP of Brand & Design at ABC. Before that his work spanned a wide variety of clients and industries—he designed the official logo for Miles Davis, brand extensions for Playboy, products for John Varvatos, retail product strategy for Motown Records, and advertising for Perrier.

Mauro Porcini ​shares how Pepsi embeds design into every aspect of their business, and how it drives the creation of new products and services.

Mauro Porcini, as PepsiCo’s first ever Chief Design Officer, is responsible for leading innovation by design across the company’s food and beverage portfolio, extending from physical to virtual expressions of the brands, including product, packaging, events, retail activation, architecture, and digital media.

Prior to PepsiCo, Mauro served as Chief Design Officer at 3M, he has worked in design at Philips and for his own firm Wisemad. Mauro’s broad approach to design has earned him several professional and personal recognitions.

Joni Saylor discusses design's impact at IBM, design thinking, and its intersection with business.

Joni Saylor is a Design Principal at IBM and directs IBM’s Design Thinking practice, with a mission to inspire adoption of human-centered innovation approaches across IBM’s teams and clients. She previously led IBM’s Design bootcamp for early career professionals, an interdisciplinary corporate education program that has prepareJoni Saylor discusses design's impact at IBM, design thinking, and its intersection with business. Joni Saylor is a Design Principal at IBM and directs IBM’s Design Thinking practice, with a mission to inspire adoption of human-centered innovation approaches across IBM’s teams and clients. She previously led IBM’s Design bootcamp for early career professionals, an interdisciplinary corporate education program that has prepared nearly 1000 recent graduates to join IBM's product and service teams. Saylor has held senior positions in design research and industrial design and previously taught the InnovationSpace studio at Arizona State University. Joni is a Master Inventor, recognized as a leader in creating and disclosing intellectual property. She regularly speaks with design and business audiences on design education and transformation. Her work has been recognized by IDEA, industrie Forum, HOW, and Core77. d nearly 1000 recent graduates to join IBM's product and service teams. Saylor has held senior positions in design research and industrial design and previously taught the InnovationSpace studio at Arizona State University.

Joni is a Master Inventor, recognized as a leader in creating and disclosing intellectual property. She regularly speaks with design and business audiences on design education and transformation. Her work has been recognized by IDEA, industrie Forum, HOW, and Core77.

From its inception in 2010, Warby Parker has placed a strong emphasis on creative solutions to customer problems. This talk will delve into how Warby Parker encourages creativity from every department internally (as it's grown from ten people to almost two thousand)—and the inner-workings of how those ideas are ultimately brought to life to improve the overall customer experience.

Tim Riley is the Senior Director of Experience Design for Warby Parker, where he leads a team of product managers and designers focused on creating holistic experiences across all of Warby Parker's digital platforms and stores. This includes overseeing the overall experience on WarbyParker.com, the company's iOS apps, and the custom point-of-sale system used in Warby Parker stores. As one of the first employees of Warby Parker, Tim was focused on developing Warby Parker's brand experience from the very beginning, helping launch the first ever Warby Parker annual report, WarbyBarker.com (for April Fool's Day), as well as establishing the brand's social media and email marketing teams. Fun fact about Tim: he's visited every single Major and Minor League Baseball stadium in the country (189 in total.)

Machine-learning-design researcher and artist Caroline Sinders discusses research driven art, machine learning, and design. Caroline Sinders is a machine-learning-design researcher and artist. For the past few years, she has been examining the intersections of natural language processing, artificial intelligence, abuse, online harassment, and politics in digital, conversational spaces.

Sinders is the founder of Convocation Design + Research, an agency focusing on the intersections of machine learning, user research, designing for public good, and solving difficult communication problems. As a designer and researcher, she's worked with Amnesty International, Intel, IBM Watson, the Wikimedia Foundation, and others. Sinders has held fellowships with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Eyebeam, STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, and the International Center of Photography. Her work has been featured in MoMA PS1, the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Slate, Quartz, and the Channels Festival. Sinders holds a masters from New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program

"In in-house, nobody can hear you scream." Christine Taylor talks about her personal experience and presumptions of going in-house, and discusses the fear associated with becoming an in-house designer and how it might define one's career.

Christine Taylor from is a multidisciplinary creative with a degrees in psychology and design. Currently she is a Creative Manager in Licensing, where she oversees the creative product development and relationships between Hallmark’s internal development teams and outside movie and TV studio licensed brands like Warner Bros., DC Comics, Harry Potter, FOX, LEGO, Minecraft, NBCUniversal, Star Wars, Star Trek, and AMC’s The Walking Dead. She is also the current Creative Lead for PopMinded — Hallmark’s pop culture brand experience — overseeing the pop-up and online shops, fan convention activities, social media, webcasts and more. Previously at Hallmark, she worked as a designer in several areas of the company including books, the internal corporate marketing & branding studio, and the B2B loyalty marketing studio working with brands like State Farm and Target. As a freelancer, Taylor has created branding and collateral for local KC theaters, bars, restaurants, and nonprofit organizations. She has spoken Design & Branding conferences as well as corporate events and AIGA Chapters. She is past president and programming director of the AIGA KC Chapter and current AIGA National Board Member, where she has co-chaired the 2017 AIGA Gala Awards and is the current chair of the Corporate Relations Committee.

From arctic ice to flying cars, Forest Young discusses 10 significant projects across his career as 10 worthy pursuits to satisfy untenable curiosities. Hear the personal story behind some of the world's most influential projects and companies.

Forest Young is a designer and educator. At Wolff Olins, he leads design initiatives for some of the world’s most influential companies. He is also a critic in graphic design at the Yale University School of Art. Prior to joining Wolff Olins, Young was the executive creative director at West, leading design across a portfolio of early stage companies alongside Allison Johnson. He is currently teaching one of California College of Arts’ inaugural courses—Future Design.

Annie Atkins specializes in graphic design for filmmaking. In addition to creating contemporary artwork for movie posters, she designs and fashions any graphic pieces outlined by a film script, such as prison escape maps, telegrams, and fake love letters. Atkins has designed the graphics for three Oscar-nominated films: the animated feature The Boxtrolls, Spielberg’s Cold War thriller Bridge of Spies, and Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel—which went on to win the Academy Award for Best Production Design. Originally from Snowdonia, Wales, Atkins has been based in Dublin, Ireland since 2007.

Rhea L. Combs is curator of photography and film at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture. She also serves as the head of the museum’s Earl W. and Amanda Stafford Center for African American Media Arts (CAAMA). Combs’ current exhibitions and projects include, Everyday Beauty: Selections from the Photography and Film Collection, and Through the African American Lens: Selections from the Permanent Collection [of NMAAHC,] along with the six-part photography book series, Double Exposure. Combs received her B.A. from Howard University, M.A. from Cornell University, and Ph.D. from Emory University. Her writings have been featured in anthologies, academic journals, and exhibition catalogues on a range of topics including: African American female filmmakers, Black popular culture, visual aesthetics, filmmaking, and photography. She’s presented talks on media, art, and culture throughout the United States.

Sarah Doody is a User Experience Designer & Product Strategist based in New York City. Sarah helps companies assess product ideas, understand customers, and design and launch products. For companies with a product already in market, she helps optimize the user experience through metrics, research. Sarah is passionate about helping people learn how to think like a designer, through writing, teaching, and speaking. Sarah created a popular weekly newsletter, The UX Notebook, and writes regularly for the design community. She also self-published her own design notebook, How To Think Like A Designer. Sarah created the curriculum for and taught General Assembly’s first 12-week UX immersive in 2011. More recently, Sarah created her own series of online UX courses including User Research Mastery and the UX Portfolio School. When not thinking about design, Sarah is training for her next marathon or planning her next trip.

Enjoy our welcome from 2017 AIGA Design Conference Chair, Tina Essmaker. Tina is a New York City-based editor and writer. She is cofounder and editor-at-large of The Great Discontent, a magazine and live event series that features inspiring conversations with today’s artists, makers, and risk-takers. Prior to her current pursuits, she earned a Bachelor of Social Work from Wayne State University in Detroit and spent over a decade working with runaway and homeless youth in Michigan.

Louise Fili is the director of Louise Fili Ltd, specializing in food packaging and restaurant identities. Fili was art director of Pantheon Books for 11 years, where she designed more than 2,000 book jackets. She is co-author, with Steven Heller, of Italian Art Deco, British Modern, Dutch Moderne, Streamline, French Modern, Deco España, German Modern, Design Connoisseur, Typology, Stylepedia, Euro Deco, Scripts, Shadow Type, Stencil Type, and Slab Serif Type. Fili has also written and designed Elegantissima, a best-selling monograph of her work, as well as Grafica della Strada, Graphique de la Rue, Gràfica de les Rambles, The Cognoscenti’s Guide to Florence, and Italianissimo. A member of the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame, she has received the AIGA Medal and the TDC Medal.

Ashley Ford lives in Brooklyn by way of Indiana. A writer, editor, and public speaker, she is currently writing a memoir and working as a senior features writer at Refinery29. Ford has written or guest-edited for The Guardian, ELLE, BuzzFeed, Slate, Teen Vogue, I.D., Lenny Letter, and various other web and print publications. She's spoken at SXSW, Earlham College, and HippoCamp, a conference for creative nonfiction writers, among other events and universities. She also taught writing at The New School and Catapult. Ford previously worked as a development executive for Matter Studios, where she focused on web series and documentaries, and was also the host of the first season of Audible's interview series Authorized.

Joe Gebbia is a multidisciplinary designer, creative entrepreneur, and global explorer. He is the cofounder and chief product officer of Airbnb, which began in 2008, born of the need to pay his rent. Gebbia’s work spans industrial design, print, and digital experiences. With an eye for simplicity and an appreciation of craft, he leads his team in creating eminently marketable products. The results are cutting-edge yet useful tools that impact the user’s experience from the moment of online contact to the end of their physical stays in Airbnb listings around the world.

Tom Geismar and Sagi Haviv, Principles at Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv   

Zach Lieberman is an artist and teacher, cofounder of the School for Poetic Computation, which explores the intersections of code, design, hardware, and theory, with a particular focus on artistic intervention. He creates performances and installations that amplify human gestures in different ways—making drawings come to life, imagining what the voice might look like if we could see it, transforming people's silhouettes into music. Lieberman was named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People. His projects have been awarded the Prix Ars Electronica, Interactive Design of the Year from the Design Museum in London, and have been listed in Time Magazine's Best Inventions of the Year. He creates artwork through writing software and is a co-creator of openFrameworks, an open source C++ toolkit for creative coding.

Wendy MacNaughton and Sarah Rich, editors of Leave Me Alone with the Recipes

Elise Roy is a deaf, inclusive design strategist who helps companies analyze problems from the vantage point of people with disabilities. She believes strongly that the unique experiences of people with disabilities help uncover hidden needs wherein the most innovative solutions are often found. Her company, Elise Roy & Associates, has attracted tech start-ups, as well as policy and development organizations such as the OECD and USAID. Roy draws on her diverse career history as a former human rights lawyer, marketer, and product designer to shape solutions for her clients. An internationally recognized speaker, Roy has given talks at Microsoft, the National Science Foundation, the United Nations, and the World Bank. Her TED talk, “When We Design for Disability, We All Benefit,” has over one million views.

Ian Spalter is head of design at Instagram, where he leads the team responsible for all things design, ranging from cross-platform app experiences to brand and identity. He was previously a senior UX manager at YouTube, and prior to that, director of UX and design at Foursquare. Spalter also spent four years at R/GA where he oversaw design development projects such as the Nike+ FuelBand and Nike Running, Basketball, and Training products. Born and raised in New Rochelle, New York, he graduated from Hampshire College.

Based in Sydney, Australia, Tea Uglow has been part of Google Creative Lab for ten years. Her work consists of experimental design and culture projects that merge physical and digital properties. She typically collaborates with artists, publishers, museums, and cultural organizations that explore new forms of creative practice using digital tools. Some of her previous projects include Editions at Play, Life in a Day (with Ridley Scott), and the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. She has partnered with organizations from the Royal Shakespeare Company to LEGO. Tea speaks globally on innovation, creativity, and diversity. Her 2015 TEDx talk has over 1.5 million views. She is and has been a board member for Biennale of Sydney, D&AD, and AWARD. She is also transgender; an open letter about her transition can be found at bit.ly/about_tea.

Reggie Watts is an internationally renowned vocal artist/beatboxer/musician/comedian who wows audiences with his live performances, which are 100 percent improvised. Using his formidable voice, looping pedals, and vast imagination, Watts blends and blurs the lines between music and comedy—no two performances are the same. “Genius” is the word most often used to describe him. In 2010, LA Weekly crowned Watts “the most wildly inventive new talent of the past five years,” while New York Magazine hailed him as “spectacularly original.” Rolling Stone featured him as “Hot Comedian,” SPIN named him “Best New Comedian,” and the Los Angeles Times praised Watts as “a superstar.”

Julie Zhuo is the VP of product design at Facebook, responsible for overseeing the design of Facebook’s core experiences. She has been at Facebook since 2006, helping to scale the service from 8 million college and high school students to more than 1 billion people globally. Over the years, she has worked on some of the most well-known and engaging designs in the world—News Feed, the Like button, profiles, photos, and more. Julie also writes about design and technology on her popular blog, The Year of the Looking Glass, and for publications such as Fast Company, The New York Times, and The Huffington Post. She received her bachelor’s degree from Stanford University as well as her master’s degree in computer science with a focus on human-computer interaction.

Paula Zuccotti is a leading expert in global consumption and a respected authority in consumer behavior and product interaction. With more than 15 years of experience working for products, brands, and services, she founded the research and creative consultancy agency TheOverworld. Formerly, she helped develop Seymourpowell’s renowned ethnographic research for 12 years as director of futures and head of research. She’s worked with renowned companies like Google Creative Lab, Starbucks, McKinsey, R/GA, and LG. In 2015, she launched her first book, Every Thing We Touch: A 24-Hour Inventory of Our Lives. Zuccotti has a B.A. Honors in industrial design from the University of Buenos Aires and an M.A. in strategy and innovation from Brunel University. She is Argentine-Italian, a mother of two, and has lived in London for the past 17 years.

About Command X

AIGA’s smash-hit live design competition Command X pits seven up-and-coming creatives against each other in a heated battle to break into the profession in front of 2,000 peers, role models, and potential employers. Also at stake: $1,000 cash and a treasure trove of killer prizes. Tackling bold design challenges with local flavor, our contestants are narrowed down one by one, with our audience helping to determine who makes the cut by voting through our app.

About Command X

AIGA’s smash-hit live design competition Command X pits seven up-and-coming creatives against each other in a heated battle to break into the profession in front of 2,000 peers, role models, and potential employers. Also at stake: $1,000 cash and a treasure trove of killer prizes. Tackling bold design challenges with local flavor, our contestants are narrowed down one by one, with our audience helping to determine who makes the cut by voting through our app.

About Command X

AIGA’s smash-hit live design competition Command X pits seven up-and-coming creatives against each other in a heated battle to break into the profession in front of 2,000 peers, role models, and potential employers. Also at stake: $1,000 cash and a treasure trove of killer prizes. Tackling bold design challenges with local flavor, our contestants are narrowed down one by one, with our audience helping to determine who makes the cut by voting through our app.

Reality Check—Do You Know Your Flow?

Filmed on October 17, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

No matter how long you’ve been in the creative business, finances are always at the forefront of your mind. Justin and Sarah Ahrens, a husband and wife team, know this reality all too well having owned and managed Rule29 for 16 years through its ups and downs. Justin and Sarah will share key reminders, processes, and tools to help you navigate your firm’s finances proactively and strategically.

Speaker bio

Justin Ahrens has led his creative firm, Rule29, for over 16 years in its commitment to “Making Creative Matter®” through great design and challenging others think differently about the world. Rule29’s culture is just as important as the work it creates; the firm is involved in many social causes, including substantial work in Africa. He has been a consistent voice for the design and business community in areas around social design and work/life balance, which he has spoken about at a previous AIGA Design Conference, Design Thinkers, Adobe Max, Brand New, and HOW, and has written about in his book, Life Kerning™: Creative Ways to Fine Tune Your Perspective on Career and Life.

Sarah Ahrens is the glue that holds creative firm Rule29’s financial framework together. Bringing over 15 years of financial and project management experience to the team, Sarah makes sure that Rule29 remains responsible to both clients and partners. Matching her financial skills and talents with the capabilities of Rule29’s designers, Sarah keeps the firm running at peak performance.

Rule29 has been recognized by major competitions and publications, including AIGA, Communication Arts, Graphis, HOW, Print, The Webby Awards, and many more.

Change it, Don’t Change it

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Keira Alexandra debuted Work-Order’s redesign of Kodak’s iconic logo at the conference. Sometimes it’s not a logo redesign, she says, but a brand reset.

Speaker bio

Keira Alexandra started her career at the seminal design studio M&Co., founded by Tibor Kalman, and went on to creative director positions at MTV and Sundance TV. She has tackled visual problem solving, naming, motion, titles, production, writing, event creation, product development, and general design. Since 1999, Alexandra has taught in the graduate graphic design program at Yale, and she frequently lectures about design. Alexandra now co-heads Work-Order, a design partnership with Kiffer Keegan.

Form Follows Function

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

New technologies and scientific discoveries are enabling new expressions in art and design. Thanks to the Internet and open movements in software, media, and education, new visual aesthetics, forms, and experiences are emerging from a variety of disciplines and locations. This talk focuses on new tools for visual/spatial expression and creation; how these tools emerged because of the aforementioned technologies; how these tools differ from traditional tools and help rethink workflows in design; and how mathematical and algorithmic approaches can be used in design.

Speaker bio

Reza Ali is a design engineer whose work encompasses computer graphics, digital fabrication, computational design, user interfaces, and software engineering. His projects take the shapes of visual art; hardware; 3D print forms; video; interactive installations; and mobile, desktop, and web apps. His clients include Dolby Laboratories, OK Go, deadmau5, Samsung, Nokia, Razorfish, SXSW, and others.

As a researcher, Ali is passionate about solving complex problems by creating new technologies and open-sourcing them to allow others to utilize his work. Through his projects, Ali explores the feedback cycle that occurs when custom tools are written to accomplish a project and/or product, and how those tools can enable work to go beyond a designer’s original vision. His work has been shown in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. Currently, he is conducting self-driven research in digital fabrication, computational design, and software tools and interfaces.

Storytelling and Brand Identity

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Kainaz Amaria and Cedrick Funches use storytelling to influence brand identity and vice versa. This designer and photojournalist team share how they are helping Vox build smarter brands, uncovering their secrets from the process.

Speaker bio

Kainaz Amaria has two words she uses over and over again: story and audience. She’s a visual storyteller who pushes her teams and their collaborators to put the user first and craft experiences that matter. Every day she works at that mission with designers, engineers, and journalists across Vox Media’s eight editorial brands so that, together, they can create stories that add purpose and value to readers’ lives.

Prior to joining Vox Media, as supervising editor on NPR’s visuals team, Amaria was part of an award-winning team of journalists whose web documentary, Planet Money Makes A T-shirt, was recognized for digital innovation by numerous organizations, including the News & Documentary Emmys. Before all the desk jobs, she was a freelance photojournalist based in Mumbai, India. Her clients included The New York Times, Vogue India, and Reuters. In 2010, she was a Fulbright Scholar and completed a short film on the Parsi Zoroastrian community in Mumbai.

Ced Funches started his career in the NBA working as an art director and graphic designer for the Minnesota Timberwolves. A driven entrepreneur, he has founded five companies, the first at age 19. He has continued to design, collaborate, and build products at a high level for print, web, and motion.

In 2011, Funches self-published his first children’s book, A World Without Mothers. Branding, diversity, and user experience shape the lens of his design work now as he serves as the executive director of design at Vox Media.

Design and the Self

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Design, as the tangible manifestation of intention, has the power to shape how we think and feel. Conversely, how we create and what we design are the culmination of who we are as individuals coming together to make something for others. In this talk, Irene Au explores how our inner state manifests in design, and why the best thing we can do to become better designers may be to work on ourselves.

Speaker bio

Irene Au is a design partner at Khosla Ventures, where she works with CEOs leading start-ups in various stages of development. She has unprecedented experience elevating the strategic importance of design within Internet companies, having built and led the user experience and design teams at Google, Yahoo!, and Udacity.

Au began her career as an interaction designer at Netscape Communications, where she worked on the design of the first commercial web browser. She graduated summa cum laude from the Honors College at the University of South Carolina and received her master's, with a focus on human-computer interaction, from the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

This symposium was made possible by IBM.

I Was Told There Would be Cake

Filmed on October 17, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Designer. Art director. Creative director. What does working toward the next level of a successful career really mean? Lindsay Ballant relates how she navigated a career in editorial design, course correcting when things didn’t go as expected. She shares her failures and successes, how she responded to shifts in her personal goals and pursuits, and her thoughts about the design industry.

Speaker bio

Lindsay Ballant is an art director and designer with a passion for journalism, storytelling, global culture, and baseball. Most recently, she was the creative director of Foreign Policy magazine, and is currently an adjunct professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.

Previously, Ballant was in San Francisco as a Code for America fellow, and worked on staff at various publications such as Newsweek, Print magazine, and The New York Times Magazine, as well as an adjunct professor at SVA in New York. Her work has received numerous awards, and she has been invited to judge a variety of design and illustration competitions. She also collaborates on other political and cultural projects that fall under the moniker of Public Service Bureau. She holds a B.F.A. from SVA, and lives in Washington, D.C.

This symposium was made possible by 3M.

Like Me

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Like it or not, people are hardwired to need brands. They fill fundamental needs: simplifying a complicated world, creating communities to belong to, and giving us something to believe in that’s bigger than ourselves. Although these needs are constant, the ways in which brands fulfill them continues to change. From Beyoncé to Alexa, Snapchat to Soul Cycle, the relationship between brand and consumer is symbiotic. In this session, Connie Birdsall will share a provocative view of the changing role of brand and examine the public’s bond with brands.

Speaker bio

Connie Birdsall, creative director of Lippincott, has pioneered the expanded role of design as the driving force of business results and brand success. Her experience encompasses more than 20 years of directing and designing global, corporate, and brand identity; marketing communications; information design; launch and implementation programs; and developing the tools and processes for successful brand management.

The creative vision behind iconic brand programs for Delta, Samsung, Starbucks, and other respected global brands, Birdsall constructed Lippincott’s world-class design practice to encompass all facets of brand expression, from digital and social media to video and voice. She served as a national board member of AIGA and has been featured in the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum along with publications such as Communication Arts, Graphis, and Architectural Digest.

Natural Selection: On Evolution of Beauty

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

“Above all else: authenticity,” says Cassidy Blackwell, who designs health and beauty products for people of color. That authenticity doesn’t have to be the most glamorous—but it does need intimacy and community. In this video, Cassidy Blackwell explores the role of authenticity in the process of building a brand both online and offline.

Speaker bio

Cassidy Blackwell leads brand marketing at Walker & Company, a family of brands designing health and beauty solutions for people of color. In her role, Blackwell manages communications and content for the company’s flagship brand, Bevel, which provides grooming products and services designed to help reduce razor bumps and skin irritation from shaving. She also runs partnerships for the company.

Named by Fast Company as one of The Most Creative People in Business 2016, Blackwell is dedicated to empowering and educating men and women of color about their options in health and beauty. Before Walker & Company, she managed social media for Stitch Fix and served as global editor for TextureMedia, the world’s largest haircare platform. She also founded Natural Selection, a blog that helps guide more than 50,000 women on how to wear their hair naturally. A Minneapolis native, she graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in French literature.

This symposium was made possible by IBM.

Everyone’s a designer. Everyone’s a critic. Everyone’s a curator.

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

The role of the designer has evolved over the past 30 years as designers sought an expanded role and voice in the creation of their work. At the same time, there has been a corresponding diffusion of cultural authority throughout the population at large. Now, it seems, everyone’s a designer, a critic, a curator. This session examines one designer’s response to the forces of change, and how designers adapt to find creative opportunities that extend the act of designing into other areas of practice: writing, editing, publishing, and curating.

Speaker bio

Director of the Cranbrook Art Museum, Andrew Blauvelt is a designer, curator, and writer who focuses on the cultural and social contexts of design. He has curated several design exhibitions, including Graphic Design—Now in Production, with the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; and Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia. He is editor of the book Parallel Cities: The Multilevel Metropolis, chronicling the concept of the elevated city.

Blauvelt received his M.F.A. in design from Cranbrook Academy of Art and has been a practicing graphic designer for 30 years. He has received nearly 100 awards for design, including the National Design Award for Corporate & Institutional Achievement from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. In addition to teaching design and architecture at several universities, Blauvelt has served on the national board of directors of AIGA, and in 2016, was named a Fellow of AIGA Minnesota. He is also an elected member of the global design association, Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI).

The Time is Now

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

A conversation with New York Times visual op-ed columnist about design, public opinion, and social justice.

Speaker bio

Charles M. Blow is the visual op-ed columnist for the New York Times, where his column appears every Monday and Thursday. Blow’s column tackles hot-button issues such as teen pregnancy, the presidential race, gender roles, and the gay rights movement. After joining the Times in 1994 as a graphics editor, Blow led the publication to win awards for its information graphics coverage of 9/11 and the Iraq war. Blow is also a CNN contributor and has appeared on Morning Joe, Andrea Mitchell Reports, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and several other TV shows and radio programs.

Blow graduated magna cum laude from Grambling State University. His New York Times bestselling memoir, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, mines the rich poetry of the out-of-time Louisiana town where he grew up—a place where slavery's legacy felt close, reverberating in the elders’ stories and in the near-constant wash of violence. It is a bravely personal story of self-invention.

Design as a Service: Earning a Seat at the Table

Filmed on October 17, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

If anyone can learn Sketch or Photoshop, what’s a designer good for, anyway? In this session, learn how a digital designer stays prepared for the future, competitive and competent in a fast-changing job market.

Speaker bio

Diógenes Brito is a digital product designer and engineer from New York, now based in San Francisco. He worked at Google, LinkedIn, and Squarespace before joining Slack in 2014.

Brito was recently featured as one of The Most Creative People in Business 2016 by Fast Company. He can be found tweeting or dancing with San Francisco Bay Area salsa and hip hop dance teams.

Be Bold in Our Actions—in Design, in Leadership, and in Life

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Designers have a responsibility to give back to the design communities, to elevate their crafts, and to affect the world. In this talk, J. Dontrese Brown discusses how to find purpose in design work and accept a designer’s duty to society.

Speaker bio

J. Dontrese Brown is a motivational creative design professional who has brought passion, inspiration, and dedication to each opportunity in his professional journey. He is a leader among leaders who is relentless in his pursuit to challenge those around him in order to stimulate growth and elevate performance. “D” always has a smile on his face and idea in his back pocket.

This symposium was made possible by TCG.

Calm Technology: Designing for the Next Generation of Devices

Filmed on October 17, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

The world is made of information competing for attention. People cannot interact with everyday life in the same way they interact with a desktop computer. Calm technology describes a state of technological maturity where a user’s primary task is not computing but being human. The idea behind calm technology is to have smarter people, not things: devices used to take advantage of location and proximity; haptics to help improve people’s lives instead of getting in the way; designers making apps “ambient,” while respecting privacy and security. This talk will cover how to use principles of calm technology to design the next generation of connected devices, exploring notification styles, compressing information into other senses, and designing for the least amount of cognitive overhead.

Speaker bio

Amber Case is a cyborg anthropologist: She studies how humans’ relationship with information is changing the way cultures think, act, and understand their worlds. Case’s TED talk, We are all cyborgs now, has been viewed more than a million times. She’s been named one of National Geographic’s Emerging Explorers, listed among Inc. Magazine’s 30 under 30, and featured as one of Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Technology.

Case was the co-founder and former CEO of Geoloqi, a location-based software company acquired by Esri in 2012. In 2008, she founded CyborgCamp, an unconference on the future of humans and computers. Case is currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. She is the author of Calm Technology: Principles and Patterns for Non-Intrusive Design.

Designing Rap

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

“Design is everything” —Public Enemy’s Chuck D. “Art can create reality. I commend you, I salute you, I want to use your power.”

Speaker bio

Chuck D is a famed rapper, lyricist, producer, and overall musician and artist. He is best known as the leader of the rap group Public Enemy. Less known to the public is his passion for graphic design, which he studied at Adelphi University, and how he has fused his art background with his music and its social messages.

Welcome and Introduction

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

What is interaction design? Liz Danzico sets the stage for the symposium by challenging the definition of interaction design itself. “The domain of interaction design is behavior... communicating stories, understanding relationships between people and people, machines and machines, and what many of us do—people and machines, and vice versa.” Get ready for presentations that surprise and inspire.

Speaker bio

Liz Danzico is creative director for NPR, whose mission is to work in partnership with member stations to create a more informed public. She is founding chairperson of the M.F.A. Interaction Design program at the School of Visual Arts (SVA), one of the world’s top design schools. Advisor to start-ups, nonprofits, and global companies, Danzico lectures widely and has written for design-minded publications, including Eye magazine, Interactions magazine, Businessweek, and on her own site, bobulate.com. She sees a lot of parallels between raising her dog and the practice of design.

Welcome and Introduction

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

“Innovation comes from within,” said Diane Domeyer of The Creative Group, who hosted this In-house symposium. Watch as she talks about TCG’s recent survey of in-house creatives which found seven key insights, including that one-third of in-house creative professionals believed that innovation was their key challenge.

Speaker bio

Diane Domeyer is executive director of The Creative Group, a specialized staffing service for interactive, design, marketing, advertising, and public relations professionals. In this position, she manages operations for the firm’s locations in major markets throughout the United States and Canada. Domeyer is a noted career expert and frequent presenter on hiring and management topics. She has been interviewed by numerous publications, including the Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, and more. She was named by the San Francisco Business Times as one of The Most Influential Women in the Bay Area for six consecutive years. Domeyer holds a B.A. from the University of St. Thomas.

This symposium was made possible by TCG.

Emerging Designers Symposium

Filmed on October 17, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

“Our purpose and passion are not static; they’ll change within the course of our careers,” says Tina Essmaker. She’s a New York City-based editor and writer, and editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Great Discontent, a magazine and live event series featuring inspiring conversations with artists, makers, and risk-takers. She wants to know: What are you curious about?

Speaker bio

Born and raised in southeastern Michigan, Tina Essmaker is the creative mind behind The Great Discontent, the media platform bringing recognition to the greatest emerging designers of our time. Prior to her current pursuits, she earned a Bachelor of Social Work from Wayne State University in Detroit and spent more than a decade working with runaways and homeless youths in Michigan.

This symposium was made possible by 3M.

Mr. Independent

Filmed on October 17, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

The temptation to make money over making a difference only gets louder at time, says Ryan Fitzgibbon. After three years at IDEO, the collaboration conglomerate, Ryan Fitzgibbon ventured off on his own to start Hello Mr., the magazine about men who date men. He’ll share his journey from art school to consultancy to publishing, and how to quiet the noise.

Speaker bio

Ryan Fitzgibbon is the founder and publisher of Hello Mr. He began his career as a communication designer at IDEO in San Francisco. After three years capturing insights for various design challenges around the globe, he moved to Australia to pursue his own venture in storytelling, ultimately launching the first issue of Hello Mr. In 2014, he moved to Brooklyn to continue independently publishing the biannual magazine, highlighted by New York magazine as part of “the new generation of indie magazines.”

Fitzgibbon has served as co-chair of communications for the San Francisco chapter of AIGA, competed in the second annual Command X at the AIGA Design Conference in Memphis, and was invited to a trial residency at Benetton’s prestigious communications research center, Fabrica, in Treviso, Italy. In 2015, he was named one of Print magazine’s New Visual Artists 15 Under 30.

This symposium was made possible by 3M.

Designing the Modern South

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Gus Granger and Stefan Reddick share the story of a dream design project that catapulted them into a national spotlight, earning them tremendous praise while also making them fear for their lives.

Gus Granger

Gus Granger is the founder and principal of creative and branding at 70kft, an integrated brand communications agency. 70kft works with clients of all sizes, from burgeoning start-ups to global brands such as Verizon, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and GE. A designer first, Granger often gets down in the weeds with the team to execute strategic designs, playing lead strategist and brand counselor for many accounts.

Granger is the president emeritus of the Dallas/Fort Worth AIGA chapter, and currently sits on AIGA’s Diversity & Inclusion task force. His work has previously been recognized by Adobe, Architectural Digest, Communication Arts, Graphis, Print magazine, among others. In 2015, 70kft made the Inc. 5000, a list of the fastest-growing private U.S. companies, as well as the Dallas Business Journal’s Best Places to Work.

Stefan Reddick

Stefan Reddick is the creative director of 70kft, the Dallas-based integrated brand communications agency. He manages the agency’s creative initiatives for clients ranging from start-ups to nonprofits to global brands including GE, Verizon, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Reddick’s design work has been featured in notable design showcases. He has also been featured as one of Graphic Design USA’s People to Watch and has served as president of the AIGA Dallas/Fort Worth chapter.

Reclaiming Craft

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Designers have the power to bring art into the everyday and beauty into the mundane. While technology is a power tool for creation, it can sometimes commoditize design, removing the soul, the spirit, and the imperfection. Matt George shares his thoughts on the power of craft and its potential to reconnect design with humanity.

Speaker bio

Matt George is a country boy from Greenville, Texas currently serving as creative director at Tractorbeam. He enjoys calligraphy, Copenhagen, and collar stays. He earned his stripes at VSA Partners in Chicago, working with Fortune 500 companies before returning to his Texas roots in Dallas. During the past decade, he has cultivated and mentored young talent from across the country, often finding his designers poached by companies such as Nike, Google, and Amazon. He isn’t that mad about it.

At Tractorbeam, George guides strategic and creative vision and is passionate about collaboration with fine artists and craftsmen. He prefers working with the (initially) unwilling and/or semi-retired, because that means no one else is doing it. He also just bought his first truck.

Keeping the Doors Open

Filmed on October 17, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Smart marketing is an invaluable tool, requiring strategic agility and a multi-level effort in order to get results. In this session, Ann Harakawa shares her insights about best practices in responding to RFPs, crafting strong proposals, standing out in interviews, and nurturing positive client relationships. Learn how to manage leads, convert leads into opportunities, and cultivate those opportunities so they become robust, sustaining projects.

Speaker bio

Ann Harakawa and Two Twelve are known for creating logical and perfectly executed wayfinding strategies, master plans, and environmental graphics. They specialize in complex, multi-stakeholder projects for major clients in healthcare, education, transportation, government, and the corporate world. As CEO of Two Twelve, she guides all business activities in New York City and Honolulu.

Harakawa is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design and Yale, and a Fulbright Scholar. Harakawa was a longtime board member of the Art Directors Club, and is currently on the board of governors for the Japanese American National Museum as well as the board of directors for the Design Trust for Public Space.

The Odds Are Good When the Goods Are Odd

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Effective design doesn’t have to be soulless. Whimsy and delight often triumph over bland efficiency. In his talk, David Heasty encourages attendees to break the trance of their daily treadmill by creating beautiful speed bumps.

Speaker bio

David Heasty is a co-founder of the Brooklyn-based studio Triboro. With his partner, Stefanie Weigler, the duo attracts a global client base, ranging from innovative start-ups to respected international brands. Recent Triboro projects include a Nike logo for New York City; branding the fashion labels Everlane and BLK DNM; restaurant identities for The Standard Hotels; collaborations with artists such as Ai Weiwei and Blonde Redhead; and publications for MoMA and GQ.

In addition to client work, Heasty teaches design at SVA and conducts personal experiments such as Triboro’s One-Color Subway Map. He has received numerous industry awards including being named one of the ADC Young Guns and Print magazine’s 20 Under 30. Born in Dallas, Heasty studied graphic design at Penn State and began his career working with designer Alexander Gelman.

The New SFMOMA Visual Identity

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Get the behind-the-scenes story of how the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Design Studio brought to life a new visual identity and thereby transformed more than just its letterhead. The details of how physical spaces, digital platforms, and even bathroom icons were injected with warmth and openness will be shared, revealing a process full of surprises. Attendees will gain insight into what it takes to persuade an internationally renowned museum of modern and contemporary art to redesign its logo in-house, and then to trust its staff to deliver the goods.

Speaker bio

Bosco Hernández was born and raised in Mexico City. He received a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2002. In 2013, he received an M.F.A. from the Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem, Netherlands. His work has been exhibited internationally at MoMA PS1, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, and the International Poster and Graphic Design Festival at Chaumont.

As the design director at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Jennifer Sonderby provides creative and strategic direction to SFMOMA’s brand, leading an award-winning design studio whose work includes the recent launch of the museum’s new visual identity. The launch coincided with the opening of SFMOMA’s expanded new building in May 2016. Sonderby’s team re-envisioned every aspect of the institution’s visual communications—from wayfinding signage to exhibition identities to digital initiatives.

This symposium was made possible by TCG.

In Progress

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

In recent years, more and more aspiring creatives have sought to pursue their passions for typography. The artistic disciplines of lettering and type design require an eye for detail, a love of tedium, and a lot of time alone in the studio. These disciplines can also seem impossible to dive into without the proper mentorship or access to a library of typographic resources. When starting out in any new field, the key is to develop a consistent process with which to approach projects. A disciplined approach to process helps with time management, client relationships, and alleviates even the worst cases of “blank canvas syndrome.” In her talk, Jessica Hische will share her path to developing her lettering process, demonstrate how to “be your own client,” and upload tips and tricks to attendees’ brains.

Speaker bio

Jessica Hische is a lettering artist and author working in San Francisco. She has had the pleasure of working for clients including Wes Anderson, The United States Postal Service, The New York Times, and Penguin Books. Her work has been featured in design and illustration annuals in the U.S. and internationally. She’s been named a Print magazine New Visual Artist (2009), as well as one of the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Art and Design, ADC Young Guns, and Graphic Design USA People to Watch.

Aside from her illustrious client work, she has created numerous side projects including Daily Drop Cap; Should I Work for Free?; Mom This is How Twitter Works; and Don’t Fear the Internet (created along with Russ Maschmeyer). Hische has traveled the world speaking at conferences about her work and ideas. Her first book, In Progress, is available from Chronicle Books.

Your Day Job and Your Real Job

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

For an in-house designer at an early stage start-up, “building the plane while flying it” isn’t just an idiom, but a daily mantra. Everett Katigbak will share his experiences during the early days at Facebook, Pinterest, and, currently, Stripe. He’ll also talk about galvanizing internal culture within a rapidly scaling organization through grassroots initiatives such as the Facebook Analog Research Laboratory and guerrilla side projects.

Speaker bio

Everett Katigbak is a storyteller, designer, and strategist in the Bay Area who helps emerging companies develop their brands. He was on the original design team at Facebook, where he produced work that told personal, human stories of how the service helped to connect billions of people. He was also a co-­founder of the Facebook Analog Research Laboratory; a rogue band of designers who challenged the company’s way of thinking and cultural values.

This symposium was made possible by TCG.

Is it True That Copyright Does Not Protect Graphic Design?

Filmed on October 17, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

There’s a persistent urban myth that says “graphic design is not protected by copyright.” Academics, lawyers, and even some employees in the U.S. Copyright Office have believed this to be true, but fortunately, they’re mistaken. Graphic and web design can often fit into a legal category of copyright protection for work called a “compilation.” In this session, Linda Joy Kattwinkel and Shel Perkins explain what a compilation is, show a range of examples, and explain the process for registering one.

Speaker bio

Linda Joy Kattwinkel has been a visual artist for more than 40 years and an attorney and mediator for the arts community for more than 20 years. She graduated cum laude with a B.F.A. in communications arts from Virginia Commonwealth University, where she studied with Philip Meggs. For 13 years, she worked as a graphic designer and illustrator before receiving her law degree from UC Hastings College of the Law.

Kattwinkel represents designers and visual artists in matters of intellectual property and arts law, such as copyright and trademark protection, infringement, licensing, and gallery contracts. She is the author of Legalities, an online column for designers about legal issues and co-authored AIGA’s “Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services” with Shel Perkins.

Shel Perkins is a graphic designer, management consultant, and educator with more than 20 years of experience in managing the operations of leading design firms in the United States and the United Kingdom. He provides management consulting services to a range of creative firms in both traditional and new media and has written the Professional Practice column for STEP Inside Design magazine, the Design Business newsletter for AIGA, the Design Firm Management column for Graphics.com, and the best-selling book, Talent is Not Enough: Business Secrets for Designers.

Perkins teaches graduate-level courses in professional practices and has given presentations for many organizations, including Industrial Designers Society of America, Society for Experimental Graphic Design, and HOW magazine. He has served on the national boards of AIGA and the Association of Professional Design Firms, and is currently chairman of the AIGA Center for Practice Management.

Why Thinking Outside the Box is Wrong

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

It is common to hear the cry “Think outside the box!” This talk explores how this might be a limiting approach to problem solving and help give designers a reason to abandon any attempt to think outside the box.

Speaker bio

Born and raised in Louisiana, Amos Kennedy Jr.’s path to design has been anything but linear. At the age of 40, Kennedy left his job as a systems analyst to pursue a career as a letterpress printer. After studying under legendary book designer and papermaker Walter Hamady, Kennedy earned his M.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Kennedy’s signature brand of socially and politically charged letterpress and incendiary posters has been the subject of the 2008 documentary Proceed and Be Bold! Below is how Kennedy chronicles his own experience:

I was born.

I am animal.
I am human.

I live.

I live negro.
I tell you this because you will mistake me for an africanamerican BUT I am negro, a descendant of the enslaved peoples of theseunitedstatesofamerica.
I live southern.
I was born colored in Louisiana. I was raised negro. I was educated Black at Grambling College, a historically integrated college.
I live in the moment.
In the moment is creation. Creation is within every human. We must celebrate our creativity. The moment fuels our creativity.
I live to put ink on paper.
This is the major outlet for my creativity. I put ink on paper for the glory of my peoples. The words of my peoples have largely been excluded from "fine print." I defy this condition and force my peoples' presence into this part of this civilization's culture.
I am a printer.
I am not an artist.
I am a stuff-maker.
I am not an artist.
I am a visitor.

I will die.

Searching for New Forms of Expression

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

The thresholds of art, design, and technology make way for vast experimental possibilities. Blurring the lines between these mediums creates a challenging perspective to examine the relationship between humans and technology. Following a versatile approach to the creative process, onformative shares their philosophy and credo through the collaborative and interdisciplinary practice of the studio.

Speaker bio

Cedric Kiefer is an artist and designer from Berlin. In 2010, he and Julia Laub founded onformative, a Berlin-based studio specializing in digital art and design. As creative lead, Kiefer develops and directs projects to define the creative vision of the studio.

Constantly searching for new forms of creative expression, onformative draws inspiration from observing their surroundings. This incites exploration of the possibilities that lie between analog and digital fields to examine the relationship of humans and technology. They develop innovative projects across media, ranging from interactive installations and generative design, to dynamic visuals and data-driven narratives. Through an interdisciplinary and collaborative practice, the visual language of onformative is variable. Their works have been exhibited internationally at galleries such as the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and the China Museum of Digital Arts, and at festivals across Europe including Ars Electronica.

Culture and Criticism

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Andrea Lipps, host of this Culture and Criticism symposium and assistant curator of contemporary design at Cooper Hewitt, explores the continually-evolving conversation about social impact of design and its complex cultural context.

Speaker bio

Andrea Lipps is a curator, writer, and educator. Focused on contemporary design, Lipps is assistant curator of Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in collaboration with Ellen Lupton. She has contributed to numerous books and exhibitions, including Design with the Other 90%: Cities; Why Design Now? National Design Triennial; and Design for the Other 90%.

A participant on a number of international design juries, Lipps speaks frequently at events, symposia, and conferences on contemporary design and curatorial practice, and is a visiting critic at both Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design. Andrea holds a master’s degree in history of decorative arts and design from Parsons in conjunction with Cooper Hewitt, and a bachelor’s degree in French, sociology, and women’s studies from the University of Michigan.

Businessweek School of Design

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Tracy Ma talks about group dynamic and the importance of friendships within the workplace, based on her experience working on the in-house team at Businessweek from 2011 to 2016. Highlighting a few case studies, she will explain “group flow,” and how constant collaboration and experimentation within the team of 15–20 art directors and photo editors has led to the formation of a Businessweek School of Design.

Speaker bio

Hong Kong–born, Canadian graphic designer Tracy Ma is the creative director of Matter Studios, a new media incubator. With Matter, she builds creative teams around nonfiction projects in the form of books, longform journalism, web-video series, and documentaries.

This symposium was made possible by TCG.

Fish and Ponds of Various Sizes

Filmed on October 17, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Making career—and life—choices is daunting. In this session, SuperFriendly director, Dan Mall, shares stories about the guidelines he established early on that made his career choices easier, and give some tips on how others can do the same. “Clients only freak out when they don’t see the future.”

Speaker bio

Dan Mall is a creative director and advisor from Philly. He’s the founder and executive director of SuperFriendly, a design collaborative that brings exquisite creative direction and design to important and interesting organizations worldwide.

Mall is an enthralled husband, father, and co-founder of “Typedia,” an encyclopedia of typefaces, and the Businessology Show a podcast and workshop series teaching designers how to run better businesses. He writes about design and other issues on Twitter and his website, danielmall.com.

This symposium was made possible by 3M.

Pushing Boundaries With Design and Tech

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

“Design is always perceived as something beautiful. Design isn’t about beauty. It’s about solving relevant problems”—Automattic's John Maeda, symposium curator, introduces the Design Thinking, Business, and Entrepreneurship symposium

Speaker bio

John Maeda draws on his diverse background as an MIT-trained engineer, award-winning designer, and organization executive to help leaders, inventors, and designers push the boundaries of innovation in their fields. An internationally recognized speaker and author, Maeda’s books include The Laws of Simplicity, Creative Code, and Redesigning Leadership, and his TED talks have received more than 2 million views to date.

Maeda holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, an M.B.A. from Arizona State University, and a Ph.D from University of Tsukuba in Japan. He was the recipient of the White House’s National Design Award, the Blouin Creative Leadership Summit Award, the AIGA Medal, the Raymond Loewy Foundation Lucky Strike Designer Award, the Mainichi Design Prize, the Tokyo TDC Design Prize, and has been inducted into the ADC Hall of Fame. Maeda’s Twitter account was dubbed one of Time magazine’s 140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2012.

This symposium was made possible by IBM.

Pushing Boundaries With Design and Tech

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Computational design leverages the ongoing impacts of Moore’s Law to achieve outsized results in business today. Those businesses are no longer limited to the high-tech industry and just a few computer nerds. Due to the mobile revolution, computational design now impacts everyone. When a technology matures, design has always played a significant role, whether during the Industrial Revolution via the masters at the Bauhaus or the work at GM in the ’50s under Alfred P. Sloan. In this session, John Maeda will discuss how the age of good computational design has birthed great businesses, and in so doing has created great challenges in and beyond business.

Speaker bio

John Maeda draws on his diverse background as an MIT-trained engineer, award-winning designer, and organization executive to help leaders, inventors, and designers push the boundaries of innovation in their fields. An internationally recognized speaker and author, Maeda’s books include The Laws of Simplicity, Creative Code, and Redesigning Leadership, and his TED talks have received more than 2 million views to date.

Maeda holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, an M.B.A. from Arizona State University, and a Ph.D from University of Tsukuba in Japan. He was the recipient of the White House’s National Design Award, the Blouin Creative Leadership Summit Award, the AIGA Medal, the Raymond Loewy Foundation Lucky Strike Designer Award, the Mainichi Design Prize, the Tokyo TDC Design Prize, and has been inducted into the ADC Hall of Fame. Maeda’s Twitter account was dubbed one of Time magazine’s 140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2012.

Design and Experience as an Engine for Business Growth

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

With a history of working in some of the worlds most creative agencies, Oliver Maltby discusses his journey from boutique design to recently rebranding the Sydney Opera House. He talks about what is influencing brand design now; identifying five paths that will contribute towards the growth of businesses in the future.

Oliver Maltby

Oliver Maltby is the executive creative director for Interbrand, New York. He was formerly the creative director of Interbrand, Melbourne and Sydney offices where his work included the rebrands of the iconic Sydney Opera House, Australia’s largest digital media company, Sensis, and ahm, Australia’s fastest growing health insurer. Prior to Interbrand, he was the creative director of The Chase, London which, under his direction, was awarded the most creatively awarded agency in the world in 2012.

Throughout his career, Maltby has been consistently recognized by a host of national and international design awards in numerous categories. He has amounted more than fifty awards which include five D&AD Pencils, three Cannes Lions, three New York Festivals, one Clio, and two Design Week Bulbs (and a few more ‘in book’) amongst other bits of metal, wood, and acrylic.

Untitled short #1

Filmed on October 17, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Roman Mars debuts a never-before-heard podcast episode of 99% Invisible on the main stage. “When you make something who are you excluding and why? And does it make the world a better place?” —Roman Mars, 2016 AIGA Design Conference host.

Speaker bio

Roman Mars is the host and creator of 99% Invisible, a short radio show about design and architecture. With over 40 million downloads, the 99% Invisible podcast is one of the most popular podcasts in the world. He was a TED main stage speaker in 2015, and in 2013 Fast Company named him one of the “100 Most Creative People.” His crowdfunding campaigns have raised over $1 million, making him the highest funded journalist in Kickstarter history. He’s also a co-founder of Radiotopia, a collective of ground-breaking story-driven podcasts.

Untitled short #2

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Roman Mars debuts a never-before-heard podcast episode of 99% Invisible on the main stage. “When you make something who are you excluding and why? And does it make the world a better place?” —Roman Mars, 2016 AIGA Design Conference host.

Speaker bio

Roman Mars is the host and creator of 99% Invisible, a short radio show about design and architecture. With over 40 million downloads, the 99% Invisible podcast is one of the most popular podcasts in the world. He was a TED main stage speaker in 2015, and in 2013 Fast Company named him one of the “100 Most Creative People.” His crowdfunding campaigns have raised over $1 million, making him the highest funded journalist in Kickstarter history. He’s also a co-founder of Radiotopia, a collective of ground-breaking story-driven podcasts.

Untitled short #3

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Roman Mars debuts a never-before-heard podcast episode of 99% Invisible on the main stage. “When you make something who are you excluding and why? And does it make the world a better place?” —Roman Mars, 2016 AIGA Design Conference host.

Speaker bio

Roman Mars is the host and creator of 99% Invisible, a short radio show about design and architecture. With over 40 million downloads, the 99% Invisible podcast is one of the most popular podcasts in the world. He was a TED main stage speaker in 2015, and in 2013 Fast Company named him one of the “100 Most Creative People.” His crowdfunding campaigns have raised over $1 million, making him the highest funded journalist in Kickstarter history. He’s also a co-founder of Radiotopia, a collective of ground-breaking story-driven podcasts.

The Rise of the Creative Class

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

In this discussion, Jason Mayden will highlight how branding and analysis impact design. When it comes to branding, engendering a mindset of brand “distinction” versus “differentiation” is key, and listening to the voice of the consumer can lead to significant competitive advantages. Learn how high-impact industries leverage the power of data and predictive analytics as a new medium for inspiring narratives and immersive experiences.

Speaker bio

Jason Mayden assists Accel with the continuous development of the brand’s position amongst the global community of entrepreneurs while working with portfolio companies on deepening and extending their knowledge and ability to create cultures of curiosity. He is also co-founder of Slyce, a platform focused on empowering brands to enhance talent partnerships through content distribution and analytics.

During his more than 13-year career at Nike, Mayden oversaw the design and execution of all conceptual products, data-driven innovations, and inline lifestyle and performance products for Jordan Brand. As global director of innovation for Nike+ Digital Sport, he was responsible for the investigation of new technologies and services, such as the Nike+ FuelBand. Mayden is also a d.Fellow and media designer at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, a frequent lecturer at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, a regular columnist for Hypebeast Magazine, and an advisory board member for his undergraduate alma mater, the College for Creative Studies.

This symposium was made possible by IBM.

Designing from the inside: The Able Made story

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

A personal tragedy led Suzanne McKenzie to start Able Made, an active lifestyle fashion brand that promotes healthy living and gives back to city youth through soccer. In this video, she talks about how design can solve the biggest problems, inspire, and promote a connected humanity.

Speaker bio

Suzanne McKenzie is founder and CEO of Able Made, an active lifestyle brand that inspires healthy living and combines bold design with responsible manufacturing and community outreach. An award-winning creative director/designer, she is passionate about using design and collaboration to better the world. Prior to launching Able Made, McKenzie spent 17 years in the advertising and design consultancy worlds, and worked on projects for MoMA, Tom Ford, the Olympic Games, AIGA, and more.

In 2015, McKenzie was selected to attend President Obama's Emerging Global Entrepreneurs event at the White House. A teacher of design and social entrepreneurship at SVA, she runs The Ucal McKenzie Breakaway Foundation, a nonprofit that gives city youth access to soccer and health education. In 2010, the organization received a Sappi Ideas that Matter Grant. McKenzie’s work has been featured in “Businessweek,” “Vanity Fair,” “Graphic Design USA,” and “WWD,” and has been recognized by ADC, the Hatch Awards, The One Show, WebAwards, and Mobius Awards.

Untitled (This is a Metaphor)

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Designer Jeremy Mende explores how design can be the catalyst for expression, investigation, activism, and imagining the world not as it is, but as it ought to be.

Speaker bio

Jeremy Mende is a designer who, if questioned, will deny being a Modernist but enthusiastically admit to a belief in beauty and its essential role in producing things of value and durability. He received his B.A. in psychology from UCLA and his M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art. In 2000, he founded MendeDesign, a creative practice that balances commercial projects with less easily categorized “investigations.” The studio practices design as equal parts expression, criticism, intuition, and advocacy.

Mende is a member of the design faculty at the California College of the Arts where he teaches critical theory and experimental methods. He was a 2010–2011 Rome Prize winner in Design at the American Academy in Rome. Before beginning his career as a designer, Jeremy skippered a mail packet boat off the coast of Nova Scotia.

Welcome and Introduction

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Debbie Millman, host of this Branding and Strategy symposium and CMO of Sterling Brand, explores how a series of symbols can comprise the journey and experience of a brand, and the challenges of making scary new changes palatable. After all, “branding is deliberate differentiation.”

Speaker bio

Debbie Millman is a designer, author, educator, and strategist. She hosts the award-winning podcast Design Matters, and is chair of the world’s first Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts. Millman is the CMO of Sterling Brands, president emeritus of AIGA, and a contributing editorial and creative director at Print magazine. She is the author of six books on design and branding.

Let us Now Praise Ordinary People

Filmed on October 17, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Companies promise to change the world, but how they intend to do that isn’t always beneficial, and the changes don’t always serve the public good. Rather than accept the world as designed by corporations, we need to change not just how our society is designed, but who is designing it.

Speaker bio

Mike Monteiro is the co-founder and design director of Mule Design Studio. He prefers elegant, simple sites with clear language that serve a real need, and designers with strong spines. Monteiro writes and speaks frequently about the craft and business of design.

Monteiro loves client services so much, he wrote two books on the topic: Design is a Job and You’re My Favorite Client. In 2014, Monteiro received the Net Award for Conference Talk of the Year for his inspirational polemic on responsibility, “How Designers Destroyed the World.”

From the Courtroom to the Studio

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

For Australian lettering artist Gemma O’Brien, adaptation has shaped her career ever since she dropped out of law school in 2006 to study design. In this session, she discusses how she continually reshapes her craft to fit new media and cultural trends, while discovering new ways to work by hand in the digital age.

Speaker bio

Gemma O’Brien is an Australian artist specializing in lettering, illustration, and typography. After completing a Bachelor of Design at UNSW Art & Design in Sydney, O’Brien worked as an art director at Animal Logic, Fuel VFX, and Toby & Pete before deciding to fly solo as a commercial illustrator in 2012. Her typographic work takes on a variety of forms, from calligraphic brushwork, illustration and digital type, to large-scale hand-painted murals.

O’Brien splits her time between advertising commissions, gallery shows, speaking engagements, and hosting hand-lettering workshops around the world. Her clients include Playboy magazine, Nike, Volcom, Kirin, Heineken, Qantas Airways, and Diet Coke. A number of her projects have won the Type Directors Club Communication Design competition, and in 2015 she was recognized as one of the ADC Young Guns.

Designing for people at the greatest time of need

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

On a daily basis, people interact with multiple organizations trying to improve their lives. Or perhaps even more simply, remove roadblocks that prevent them from achieving their full success. Often, people find themselves turning to the U.S. government at their greatest time of need. In this video, Eduardo Ortiz shares how the team at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is applying human-centered-design to best meet the needs of the public.

Speaker bio

Eduardo F. Ortiz is a creative director at the United States Digital Service at the Department of Homeland Security, and has over 13 years of experience as a software engineer, user experience designer, and a front-end developer.

Ortiz is a co-founder of BKUX, one of the fastest growing design communities in Brooklyn, New York. He is also a local leader for the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) a member-supported organization dedicated to the discipline of interaction design, and a volunteer for the Information Architecture Institute an organization focused with making information clearer and easier to use. He has spoken at past conferences on topics about measuring user experience, empathy, and team building.

Going Fast to Nowhere

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Creativity has many different facets. From fashion to music and culinary endeavors, Sebastián Padilla has demonstrated that it’s possible to have multiple personal projects and still run a successful design studio. They key is to accomplish one goal at a time, still find time to update Facebook, and not go completely insane.

Speaker bio

Born in Monterrey, Sebastián Padilla is one of the founding partners of Anagrama, an international branding, architecture, and software-development firm with offices in Monterrey and Mexico City. Together with Mike Herrera, Gustavo Muñoz, Danie Garza, and Roberto Treviño, Padilla is in charge of the art and creative direction of every project, from branding, to web and architecture.

Anagrama focuses on creating the perfect balance between a design boutique and a business consultancy, developing creative pieces with the utmost attention to detail, while also providing solutions based on data analysis. Their services span the branding spectrum—strategic brand consulting, logotype, naming, peripherals, and captivating illustration design—and are applied through architecture and interior design projects, and business-based solutions around custom-developed software.

Welcome and Introduction

Filmed on October 17, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Host of the Practice Management Symposium Shel Perkins delves into the must-know topics for independent designers as well as design managers in large firms. Tune in to learn how to protect your work, strategically plan your finances, and other valuable guidance to make a living doing what you love.

Speaker bio

Shel Perkins is a graphic designer, management consultant, and educator with more than 20 years of experience in managing the operations of leading design firms in the United States and the United Kingdom. He provides management consulting services to a range of creative firms in both traditional and new media and has written the Professional Practice column for STEP Inside Design magazine, the Design Business newsletter for AIGA, the Design Firm Management column for Graphics.com, and the best-selling book, Talent is Not Enough: Business Secrets for Designers.

Perkins teaches graduate-level courses in professional practices and has given presentations for many organizations, including Industrial Designers Society of America, Society for Experimental Graphic Design, and HOW magazine. He has served on the national boards of AIGA and the Association of Professional Design Firms, and is currently chairman of the AIGA Center for Practice Management.

Designing for the Next Generation of Innovators

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

It is impossible to prepare students for what we think—today—will be the careers of the future. Krystal Persaud explores how littleBits, a platform of easy-to-use electronic building blocks, is designing unique learning experiences that draw on principles from the maker movement, STEM/STEAM, and ambush learning. Through this framework, the company aims to empower students with creative confidence, technological literacy, and lifelong learning skills to prepare them for the 21st century and beyond.

Speaker bio

Krystal Persaud is the director of product design and product management at littleBits, the award-winning platform of electronic building blocks that empowers people to invent things, large and small. A graduate of the Georgia Tech School of Industrial Design, she is also the founder and managing member of the design collective Grouphug.

Persaud teaches product design at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. She is committed to the idea that product design will revolutionize the fields of education, public health, and sustainability, and is passionate about bridging gaps between industrial design and other disciplines.

Science, art, and magic: The world is a wunderkammer

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Art can impact one’s perception; magic can inspire belief in the impossible. And science can be just as powerful, simultaneously sparking curiosity, passion, and intellect. The future depends on motivating people to engage with science and technology, to be part of the conversation about what’s possible, probable, and desirable. David Pescovitz leads a tour of tomorrow that will astonish, educate, and provoke. He’ll present important and mind-bending trends in science and technology from invisibility cloaks to psychokinesis, nanoscale artworks to magical interfaces. There are no facts about the future, only possibilities to be imagined and realized.

Speaker bio

David Pescovitz is a co-editor and managing partner of “Boing Boing,” the influential tech/culture webzine with more than five million readers. He is also a research director at Institute for the Future, a nonprofit think tank that helps organizations and the public consider long-term future trends in order to make better decisions in the present. Pescovitz was also the founding editor-at-large for “Make:,” the DIY technology magazine, and co-wrote the book “Reality Check,” based on his long-running futurist column in “Wired” magazine.

Pescovitz has written for “Scientific American,” “The New York Times,” “The Washington Post,” “Salon,” and “New Scientist,” among others. His writings on technology and culture are featured in the books “What Are You Optimistic About?: Today's Leading Thinkers on Why Things Are Good and Getting Better”; “Dissident Futures”; and “The Happy Mutant Handbook.” He was the first ever writer-in-residence at UC Berkeley's College of Engineering and College of Letters & Science.

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Named after Quindar tones, the transmission beeps heard during early manned-spaceflight missions, this “part theory, part band” ensemble selects archival materials and folds them into ambient, electronic, and experimental music. Just as early astronauts inevitably improvised within heavily rehearsed mission choreographies, this performance begins with a carefully mapped out strategy that becomes surprisingly improvisational in real-time.

Speaker bio

Quindar is a collaboration between Grammy Award–winning musician Mikael Jorgensen (Wilco) and art historian and curator James Merle Thomas. Combining historical research with musical performance, the duo selects archival audio, film, and design elements, which they use to create ambient, electronic, and experimental music with accompanying film projections.

Since 2012, Quindar—derived from communication technologies developed during the early years of the U.S. manned spaceflight program—has worked with the archives of NASA’s History Office, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the Department of Space History of the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian. In 2014, Jorgensen and Thomas began collaborating with the School of Cinema at USC and several Los Angeles–based aerospace companies to digitize and screen industrial films of the 1960s and 1970s. Quindar collaborated with guitarist William Tyler and composer Nick Hallett earlier this year to premiere The Trimbin Band; their first full-length record will be released in late 2016.

Made possible by Amazon Design and Amazon Music

Brands Personified

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

We are all matchmakers; we get people and brands to fall in love with each other. Building a brand is about intuition, evolution, storytelling, and building an irresistible persona. After all, people don’t fall in love with businesses, they fall in love with personalities. In this presentation, Yo Santosa will share the nuances in creating brand personas from holding on to beautiful words for inspiration to simplifying an idea and fostering optimism.

Speaker bio

Yo Santosa is the creative mind behind three Emmy Award nominations, a renowned branding agency, two start-ups, and one publication. In 2006, she started her branding agency Ferroconcrete. She believes that “people don’t fall in love with businesses, they fall in love with personalities.” Her first client, Pinkberry, grew from one store into a global brand with more than 200 stores worldwide.

Santosa also co-founded Commodity Goods in 2013, which has been featured in GQ, Fast Company, Esquire, and W magazine. An advocate for the fastest growing metropolis in the U.S., she created LA Downtowner in 2014, a print publication that reveals an insider’s view of downtown LA’s culture, food, drinks, fashion, and the people who shape it. Santosa is inspired by timeless German design, minimalist Japanese style, Dieter Rams, and a good chicken wing.

Life Lessons From the Field

Filmed on October 17, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Pentagram principal Paula Scher has designed for MOMA, the Met, the High Line, The Public Theater, and many, many more. Watch as she shares her insights on how to grow, change, sustain, fail, reinvent, and still love making things in an ever-evolving design profession and society that, in some regards, hasn’t changed much at all.

Speaker bio

For decades, Paula Scher has been at the forefront of graphic design. She began her design career as a record cover art director at Atlantic Records and CBS Records in the 1970s and 1980s, and has been a principal in the New York office of the distinguished international design consultancy Pentagram since 1991. Scher has served on the Public Design Commission of the City of New York since 2006.

Scher has designed identity and branding systems for a wide range of clients including The Public Theater, Citibank, The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Opera, the High Line, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. An established artist exhibiting worldwide, her work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art and other institutions. In 2013, Scher was honored with the National Design Award for Communication Design. She is the author of Make It Bigger and MAPS.

Welcome and Introduction

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

As the partner of HUSH, a experience design firm that blends the worlds of physical and digital, David Schwarz introduces us to the Digital Craft Symposium by introducing its overarching themes: dynamism, systems, and constraint. Though digital and craft may sound like a oxymoron, Schwarz walks us through the beautiful dance of digital, which liberates us from the physical, and craft, with its old world sentiment, that constitute contemporary design.

Speaker bio

David Schwarz is an award-winning creative leader and founding partner of HUSH, a design agency. He’s spent his career designing brand experiences that integrate content, interactivity, architecture, and technology. After graduating from ArtCenter College of Design, he worked for notable creative studios, interactive agencies, and design firms in Los Angeles and New York. Since founding HUSH, he has developed numerous projects across sport, luxury, beauty, technology, and entertainment categories, most notably: Nike, Sonos, Equinox, Estée Lauder, Google, Ted Baker, and Uber.

Schwarz has been featured in numerous publications including Creativity, Fast Company, Inc. magazine, Communication Arts, and has spoken at conferences for AIGA, The One Show, SEGD, SXSW, Adweek, Cannes Lions, and several others. He is also a mentor at NEW INC, the New Museum’s incubator program for art, technology, and design.

Bootstrapping Communities

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

The lack of diversity in the tech and games industries is a known issue. One solution is to build support networks for marginalized folks in these industries. Support networks are also important within the realm of products, as social activity adds value to services. Designing and creating supportive communities requires hard work, time, and money. In this talk, Catt Small discusses lessons learned while helping to build several successful—and a few failed—communities of varying sizes online and offline.

Speaker bio

Catt Small is a product designer, game maker, and front-end web developer. She has done design work for companies of all sizes including SoundCloud, NASDAQ OMX, and Scholastic. At the age of 10, she began coding, and was designing at the age of 15. In 2011, Small graduated from SVA with a B.F.A. in graphic design, and she earned an M.S. in integrated digital media from NYU in 2016.

Small also makes video games with Brooklyn Gamery and Buttered Toast Studios; teaches game development with The Code Liberation Foundation; and draws comics.

Pole Dancing, Preconceptions, and You

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

For most, letting go of preconceived notions is a difficult practice, but understanding what one is criticizing before one criticizes it is only fair. Consider a Rothko and a Caravaggio painting. Formally, they are exactly the same—there’s a canvas, paint on the canvas, and the person who put it there. But who painted it, how they painted it, for whom they painted it, and the viewers’ reception of the painting could not be more different. In this presentation and performance, Michelle Stanek breaks down common misconceptions about pole dancing.

Speaker bio

Michelle Stanek is an internationally recognized pole-dance performer and instructor. She won the 2012 United States Pole Dance Federation competition and her industry-changing performances are notable for their movement innovation, artistry, and fluidity. Prior to her full-time pole dance career, Stanek earned a B.A. and M.A. in Art History, worked as the program curator for AIGA, and taught art history at Pratt Institute.

A passionate and dedicated instructor, Stanek is co-owner and co-creator of elevatED: pole dance fitness and flexibility teacher trainings. Teaching and performing has taken her to Dubai, Tokyo, Africa, Scandinavia, Europe, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, the Caribbean, and around the U.S. When not traveling, she lives in New York City and instructs at Body & Pole, where she is also the pole department manager and the curator of The Wall at Body & Pole—a unique NYC gallery space showcasing contemporary visual artists.

Stranger Stories

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

When we talk with strangers in public, these experiences are threaded with emotional resonance and political possibility. Kio Stark explores how these encounters work and why, and their parallels in technologically mediated experience.

Speaker bio

Kio Stark has always talked to strangers. When she realized that not everyone shares this predilection, she started documenting her experiences and doing extensive research into the complex dynamics of how people relate to one another in public places. Her novel, Follow Me Down, began as a series of true vignettes about strangers placed in the fictional context of a woman unraveling the eerie history of a lost letter misdelivered to her door.

Stark did doctoral work at Yale University’s American Studies program—and then dropped out. While teaching graduate courses at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, countless people consulted her about whether or not to go back to school, inspiring Don’t Go Back to School, a handbook for independent learners. Stark is also the author of the TED Book When Strangers Meet, in which she argues for the pleasures and transformative possibilities of talking to people you don’t know.

Branding for Start-ups: 1980s to 2010s

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Tom Suiter has worked in Silicon Valley since 1981. In this talk, Suiter will examine the similarities and differences he’s witnessed in working for start-ups over the years, from working for one of the world’s most famous “start-ups,” Apple, to leading all design efforts for another start-up, Enjoy.

Speaker bio

Tom Suiter is co-founder and chief creative officer of Enjoy, whose mission is to reinvent the way people buy and experience technology. Enjoy currently serves San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, and five other U.S. markets.

Early in his career, Suiter was director of creative services for Apple Computers, where he and his team oversaw Apple’s corporate identity and the launch of the first Macintosh product line introduced in 1984. From 1991 to 2001, Suiter was founder and chief creative officer of CKS Group, a branding and interactive advertising agency headquartered in Silicon Valley. His team was hired by Steve Jobs in 1998 to lead marketing communications support for all Apple products, including the launch of the iMac product line and graphics for the Apple Store prototype.

This symposium was made possible by IBM.

Beyond the storefront

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

This video features LA-Más’ architectural, urban design, and business support efforts that embed placemaking, pedestrian life, and economic activity along underserved business corridors in Los Angeles. During the past two years, the organization has been working to re-envision streets as destinations first, not merely transportation corridors. Projects in the neighborhoods of Watts, Northridge, Pacoima, and Wilmington show that design strategies at the service of community and economic development are not only needed, but effective in developing sustainable, equitable growth in neighborhoods that need it most.

Speaker bio

Co-founder and co-executive director of LA-Más, Elizabeth Timme directs the focus of the non-profit design firm onto projects that critically engage systemic problems and provide solutions based on research and community engagement. To date, she’s led the Watts Community Studio project and the Reseda Boulevard Great Streets Initiative, and most recently, Timme developed the strategy and approach for Backyard Basics, a proposal for affordable housing in Elysian Valley for the A + D Museum’s “Shelter” exhibit, and is building a pilot Accessory Dwelling Unit in partnership with the mayor’s innovation team.

Timme teaches at Woodbury University's Architecture + Civic Engagement Center and serves on the Zoning Advisory Committee of re:code LA, a city-led effort to transform its outdated zoning code. She holds a master’s degree in architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Southern California.

We Are All Rock Stars Now

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

More than a musician, David Bowie was a hybrid thinker, a designer, a curator, a content manager, and an extraordinary human being. In this talk, Alina Wheeler will share some of her thoughts about the legendary pop icon: the draw of his fearlessness, his ability to reinvent himself over five decades, and the permission he gave people to be different.

Speaker bio

Alina Wheeler is the author of Designing Brand Identity. It is published in seven languages, including Chinese and Spanish. Patricia Martin, author of RenGen, says: “Designing Brand Identity is a recipe book for brand-builders. Wheeler does for branding what Julia Child did for cooking.”

Wheeler describes her work as strategic imagination. She has had a lifelong fascination with how companies and individuals express who they are and what they stand for. Over her career, she has worked with large enterprises, entrepreneurial ventures, and nonprofits. She is an AIGA Fellow, as well as a former AIGA national board member and chapter president. When she is not in Philadelphia working on the fifth edition of her book, she lives with her husband on a mountain ledge in the Adirondacks.

From Zembla to the New York Times

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Matt Willey discusses the role that typography has played in some of the magazines he has worked on ranging from small, independent titles, such as Elephant and Plastique; others that he has co-launched and co-published, namely Port and Avaunt; and his more recent work at The New York Times Magazine.

Speaker bio

Matt Willey graduated from Central Saint Martins at University of the Arts London in 1997. After gaining valuable experience at a handful of small design companies, he joined the internationally acclaimed studio Frost Design, later becoming creative director. In 2005 he set up his own studio, Studio8 Design, with business partner Zoë Bather.

Currently the art director of The New York Times Magazine, Willey co-founded Port magazine in 2011 and Avaunt magazine in 2014. That same year, he was named Designer of the Year by Creative Review, and in 2015 was made an elected member of Alliance Graphique Internationale.

Designing for Social Good

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Get a glimpse into some early-days work at Facebook, designed to help people come together to make a positive social impact. In this presentation, Luke Woods shares the stories behind three products—Safety Check, Suicide Prevention, and fundraisers for nonprofits—and highlight learnings to consider in day-to-day work.

Speaker bio

In his role at Facebook, Luke Woods and his teams have shipped products including Messenger, Internet.org, and Safety Check, while helping Facebook reach a community of more than one billion people each day. He joined Facebook in 2011 and has been head of product design since March 2015.

Prior to Facebook, Woods spent three years at IDEO in San Francisco and Chicago. Before IDEO, he spent seven years studying, receiving his B.S. in digital design from the University of Cincinnati and his M.F.A. in interactive design from the University of Washington, as well as studying abroad in Basel, Switzerland. Woods is passionate about coaching, creating process, and designing impactful products. In his spare time he enjoys running, cooking, and photography.

Respectful Design: Decolonization as an Urgent Imperative

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Many design institutions are interested in diversity and inclusion, yet seem to be unwilling or unable to do the work of “decolonizing” design through a critical engagement with design and culture. Design anthropologist Dori Tunstall proposes that this work consists of two simultaneous actions: the recognition of the intrinsic worth of different cultural ways of “design being” and the systematic dismantling of current structural hierarchies. In this presentation, she explains Respectful Design, the basis for design curriculum at OCAD University, where she serves as the first black dean of design in a North American design faculty.

Speaker bio

Sadie Red Wing, as a Native American graphic designer and a member of the Spirit Lake Nation in Fort Totten, North Dakota, stresses the importance of communicating “visual sovereignty” when designing for a tribal audience.

While attending the Graphic Design Graduate program at North Carolina State University, she explored the use of visual communication through the lens of cultural perspectives, focusing on how indigenous knowledge enhances accurate tribal design, and the importance of traditional symbolism in Native American identity. Currently, as a graduate ambassador for the American Indian College Fund, she advocates the subject of design in the tribal college curriculum and encourages Native American students to advance their higher education.

Neebinnaukzhik Southall, a member of the Chippewas of Rama First Nation, is a graphic designer, photographer, artist, and writer. In 2011 she graduated magna cum laude from Oregon State University, earning an honors B.F.A. with a minor in Fine Arts through the University Honors College and OSU’s competitive graphic design program.

Southall has continued exploring her interest in graphic design as it relates to indigenous peoples and cultures, and is passionate about promoting Native graphic designers. She writes the column Exploring Native Graphic Design for First American Art Magazine, and manages the Native Graphic Design Project, where she is compiling a list of indigenous designers. She currently works at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian as the public relations and web coordinator, and has her own creative business, Neebin Studios.

Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall is a design anthropologist, public intellectual, and design advocate who works at the intersections of critical theory, culture, and design. Dean of design at OCAD University in Toronto, she is the first black female dean of a North American design faculty. She leads the Cultures-Based Innovation Initiative focused on using old ways of knowing to drive innovation processes that directly benefit communities.

Tunstall served as associate professor of Design Anthropology and associate dean at Swinburne University in Australia. She wrote the biweekly column Un-Design for The Conversation Australia. In the U.S., she taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago, organized the U.S. National Design Policy Initiative, and served as a director of Design for Democracy. Tunstall holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Stanford University and a B.A. in Anthropology from Bryn Mawr College.

Command X (episode one)

Filmed on October 17, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Emcee Sean Adams introduces the seven contestants and judges. The contestants were given one week to design a new logo for Gamblers Anonymous. Watch as they take the main stage to present their work, receive critiques from the panel of judges, and are assigned the next challenge.

About Command X

AIGA’s smash-hit live design competition Command X pits seven up-and-coming creatives against each other in a heated battle to break into the profession in front of 2,000 peers, role models, and potential employers. Also at stake: $1,000 cash and a treasure trove of killer prizes. Tackling bold design challenges with local flavor, our contestants are narrowed down one by one, with our audience helping to determine who makes the cut by voting through our app.

Command X (episode two)

Filmed on October 18, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Emcee Sean Adams introduces the remaining five contestants and judges. For their second challenge, the contestants were given 24 hours to redesign the Zappos box and customer experience. Watch as they take the main stage to present their work, receive critiques from the panel of judges, and are assigned the next challenge.

About Command X

AIGA’s smash-hit live design competition Command X pits seven up-and-coming creatives against each other in a heated battle to break into the profession in front of 2,000 peers, role models, and potential employers. Also at stake: $1,000 cash and a treasure trove of killer prizes. Tackling bold design challenges with local flavor, our contestants are narrowed down one by one, with our audience helping to determine who makes the cut by voting through our app.

Command X (episode three)

Filmed on October 19, 2016 at the 2016 AIGA Design Conference

About this video

Emcee Sean Adams introduces the final three contestants and judges. For their third and last challenge, the contestants were given 24 hours to look at the issue of millennials and voting, and design a solution to empower and activate their votes. Watch as they take the main stage to present their work, receive critiques from the panel of judges, and find out who won this season's Command X.

About Command X

AIGA’s smash-hit live design competition Command X pits seven up-and-coming creatives against each other in a heated battle to break into the profession in front of 2,000 peers, role models, and potential employers. Also at stake: $1,000 cash and a treasure trove of killer prizes. Tackling bold design challenges with local flavor, our contestants are narrowed down one by one, with our audience helping to determine who makes the cut by voting through our app.