Karim Rashid is an Egyptian-born and Canadian raised industrial designer. His designs include luxury goods, furniture, lighting, surface design, brand identity and packaging. Time magazine has described him as the "most famous industrial designer in all the Americas" and the "Prince of Plastic". He is based in New York City, as well as Belgrade, Miami and India.
Richard Saul Wurman is an American architect and graphic designer. Wurman has written, designed, and published 90 books and created the TED conferences, the EG Conference, and TEDMED.
Massive Change is an exhibition and book by designer Bruce Mau and the Institute without Boundaries, co-authored by Jennifer Leonard from her edited interviews.
April Greiman is an American designer widely recognized as one of the first designers to embrace computer technology as a design tool. Greiman is also credited, along with early collaborator Jayme Odgers, with helping to import the European New Wave design style to the US during the late 70s and early 80s." According to design historian Steven Heller, “April Greiman was a bridge between the modern and postmodern, the analog and the digital.” “She is a pivotal proponent of the ‘new typography’ and new wave that defined late twentieth-century graphic design.” Her art combines her Swiss design training with West Coast postmodernism.
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville is an American graphic designer, artist and educator whose work reflects her belief in the importance of feminist principles and user participation in graphic design. In 1990 she became the director of the Yale University Graduate Program in Graphic Design and the first woman to receive tenure at the Yale University School of Art. In 2010 she was named the Caroline M. Street Professor of Graphic Design.
Social design is the application of design methodologies in order to tackle complex human issues, placing the social issues as the priority. Historically social design has been mindful of the designer's role and responsibility in society, and of the use of design processes to bring about social change. Social design as a discipline has been practiced primarily in two different models, as either the application of the human-centered design methodology in the social sector or governmental sector, or sometimes is synonymously practiced by designers who venture into social entrepreneurship.
Michael Bierut is a graphic designer, design critic and educator, who has been a partner at design firm Pentagram since 1990. He designed the logo for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.
Jeanne Gang is an American architect and the founder and leader of Studio Gang, an architecture and urban design practice with offices in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Paris. Gang was first widely recognized for the Aqua Tower, the tallest woman-designed building in the world at the time of its completion. Aqua has since been surpassed by the nearby St. Regis Chicago, also of her design. Surface has called Gang one of Chicago's most prominent architects of her generation, and her projects have been widely awarded.
Rebecca Belmore D.F.A. is a Canadian interdisciplinary Anishinaabekwe artist who is notable for politically conscious and socially aware performance and installation work. She is Ojibwe and a member of Obishikokaang. Belmore currently lives in Toronto, Ontario.
Ellen Lupton is a graphic designer, curator, writer, critic, and educator. Known for her love of typography, Lupton is the Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair at Maryland Institute College of Art. Previously she was the Senior Curator of Contemporary Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City and was named Curator Emerita after 30 years of service. She is the founding director of the Graphic Design M.F.A. degree program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), where she also serves as director of the Center for Design Thinking. She has written numerous books on graphic design for a variety of audiences. She has contributed to several publications, including Print, Eye, I.D., Metropolis, and The New York Times.
Jessica Helfand is a designer, author, and educator. She is a former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Eye and Communications Arts magazine, and founding editor of the website Design Observer. She is Senior Critic at Yale School of Art since 1994, a lecturer in Yale College, and Artist-in-Residence at Yale’s Institute for Network Science. Named the first Henry Wolf Resident in design at the American Academy in Rome in 2010, she is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and the Art Director’s Hall of Fame. In 2013, she won the AIGA medal.
Lorraine Wild is a Canadian-born American graphic designer, writer, art historian, and teacher. She is an AIGA Medalist and principal of Green Dragon Office, a design firm that focuses on collaborative work with artists, architects, curators, editors and publishers. Wild is based in Los Angeles, California.
John Maeda is a Vice President of Design and Artificial Intelligence at Microsoft. He is an American technologist and designer whose work explores where business, design, and technology merge to make space for the "humanist technologist."
Arthur Bruce McDonald, P.Eng is a Canadian astrophysicist. McDonald is the director of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Collaboration and held the Gordon and Patricia Gray Chair in Particle Astrophysics at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario from 2006 to 2013. He was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Japanese physicist Takaaki Kajita.
Siamak Hariri, OAA, AAA, AIBC, FRAIC, RCA, Intl. Assoc. AIA is a Canadian architect and a founding partner of Hariri Pontarini Architects, a full-service architectural and interior design practice based in Toronto, Canada.
The Design Futures Council is an interdisciplinary network of design, product, and construction leaders exploring global trends, challenges, and opportunities to advance innovation and shape the future of the industry and environment. Members include architecture and design firms, building product manufacturers, service providers, and forward-thinking AEC firms of all sizes that take an active interest in their future.
Edwin van Gelder is a Dutch graphic designer and art director based in Amsterdam. He graduated from the graphic design department at the Utrecht School of the Arts in 2004. In 2005 Van Gelder founded graphic design studio Mainstudio.
Lella Vignelli was an Italian architect, designer, and businesswomen. She collaborated closely throughout much of her life with her husband Massimo Vignelli, with whom she founded Vignelli Associates in 1971.
Rick Valicenti is an American graphic designer based in Chicago.
Maya Bird-Murphy, is an American architect, and educator. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Mobile Makers Chicago, a nonprofit that focuses on making design accessible to underrepresented communities. She has received awards and recognition from both AIA and AIGA.
