This article contains wording that promotes the subject in a subjective manner without imparting real information.(July 2023) |
R. Michael Hendrix is an American graphic designer and entrepreneur. [1]
He is a Partner and the Global Design Director of IDEO, based in the Cambridge, MA studio where he practices brand strategy, creative direction, and graphic design. [2] He cites a diagram by Charles Eames as a motivation for joining IDEO. [3] He has been a recognized advocate and practitioner of design thinking since co-founding Tricycle Inc., a sustainable design firm in 2002, which was purchased by Shaw Industries [4] in 2017. In 2021 he co-authored, Two Beats Ahead: What Musical Minds Teach Us About Innovation, with Panos Panay, published by Public Affairs in the US and Penguin in the UK.
Hendrix teaches [5] entrepreneurship at the Berklee College of Music where is also a co-founder of the Open Music Initiative, a program of the Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship.
He graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1994 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design. [6]
In a 2008 Interview with GDUSA Hendrix said, "Designers have a chance to make significant contributions as we face mounting challenges like global warming, culture wars and shifting world powers. The challenge is to understand systems of influence and to create strategies to address them at connection points. We need to be aware that the design thinking skills used in our craft are also applicable to business and social concerns." [7]
On starting an environmentally friendly carpet sample company [8] he said, "“One of my primary reasons for cofounding Tricycle was the search for a career with greater meaning and social significance,” Hendrix adds. After several years as a practicing designer, he was ready for a change. “I began to believe it was possible to change the way design works, to benefit the designer, client, and larger society.” [9]
In a 2015 interview with HOW , he commented on the changing nature of design: "I remember 20 years ago, when designers said, “We want a seat at the board table.” Guess what? We have it. The CEO doesn't want a poster or a nice brochure. That's where we were 20 years ago. That's created a whole new need for reeducating designers and a need for us to work differently. Every designer still has to utilize the craft that they studied and worked hard to develop. But if you're just a producer, you can only add one element to a solution — and you either have to find more people to add those extra elements that are needed, or you have to broaden your skillset. You either have a confederation of experts from different fields working together and reliant upon each other to produce a whole.... Or, on a smaller scale, individual designers have to be more of a generalist with a couple of depths. Like, you could be a graphic designer and a coder. That might serve you, depending on your industry. But what can't exist anymore is being a deep practitioner in a single craft and making a sustained living at it." [10]
On entrepreneurship, he said, "When you're looking for a new opportunity, often you're looking for what's not there, not what does exist." [11]
While at Tricycle Inc. he was made an AIGA Fellow for significant contributions to the field of graphic design; [12] received the Industrial Designers Society of America IDEA award [13] for the carpet simulations; was selected for the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Triennial; [14] and was a Top Nominee (now referred to as Finalist) for the Danish INDEX Awards [15] for Tricycle's sampling program.
He has also been recognized for design excellence by "American design associations and publications including the One Show, Type Directors Club, Print, HOW and Communication Arts" [16] and is a regular speaker at design conferences including WIRED, SXSW, HOW Design, AIGA, and Design Management Institute. [17]
In 2010 he co-authored an article with Jane Fulton Suri for Rotman School of Management on why design thinking should also be accompanied by design sensibilities. [18] In 2021 he co-authored, Two Beats Ahead: What Musical Minds Teach Us About Innovation, with Panos Panay.
Hendrix writes and performs music as R.M. Hendrix. He released one album and two eps in 2011 with minor press coverage. [19] Indie Machine described his music as "new wave with a side order of shoegaze". In 2014 he released "Urban Turks Country Jerks" on Moon Sounds Records, named one of the "fifty finest artists" of the year by Drowned in Sound . [20] He released "Can It Find Us Here?" in 2017, "a startling record rooted in fears, paranoia, and cultural shock, an agit-pop reflection of the insane modern times he's sought to avoid," according to Vanyaland, [21] a Boston-based music publication.
Tibor George Kalman was an American graphic designer of Hungarian origin, well known for his work as editor-in-chief of Colors magazine.
William Grant Moggridge, RDI was an English designer, author and educator who cofounded the design company IDEO and was director of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York. He was a pioneer in adopting a human-centred approach in design, and championed interaction design as a mainstream design discipline. Among his achievements, he designed the first laptop computer, the GRiD Compass, was honoured for Lifetime Achievement from the National Design Awards, and given the Prince Philip Designers Prize. He was quoted as saying, "If there is a simple, easy principle that binds everything I have done together, it is my interest in people and their relationship to things."
Stefan G. Bucher is an American writer, graphic designer and illustrator. He works through his design studio, 344 Design.
Tobias Frere-Jones is an American type designer who works in New York City. He operates the company Frere-Jones Type and teaches typeface design at the Yale School of Art MFA program.
The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) is a professional organization for design. Its members practice all forms of communication design, including graphic design, typography, interaction design, user experience, branding and identity. The organization's aim is to be the standard bearer for professional ethics and practices for the design profession. There are currently over 25,000 members and 72 chapters, and more than 200 student groups around the United States. In 2005, AIGA changed its name to “AIGA, the professional association for design,” dropping the "American Institute of Graphic Arts" to welcome all design disciplines.
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.
Steven Heller is an American art director, journalist, critic, author, and editor who specializes in topics related to graphic design.
Rebeca Méndez is a Mexican-American artist and graphic designer. She is a professor at UCLA Design Media Arts in Los Angeles, California, and since July 2020 is chair of the department, as well as founder and director of the Counterforce Lab. Her Vice-chair Peter Lunenfeld wrote about her: "Rebeca has won the three most significant awards in the field of design: The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award in Communication Design, 2012, the AIGA Medal in 2017, and induction to the One Club Hall of Fame in 2017. This triple crown would be worthy enough on its own, more than worthy, absolutely exceptional, but when you add in that Rebeca is the first and only Latina to win each one of these, much less all three, the achievement is towering." In fact, she is the only woman ever to have received all these three awards, while Bob Greenberg from R/GA is the only man to have received all of them.
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.
William Drenttel was a designer, author, publisher, social entrepreneur and foundation executive. In 2012, he was the president of Winterhouse Institute, vice president of communications and design for Teach For All, co-director of the Transform Symposium at the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation, and the recipient of Rockefeller Foundation support to develop models for design and social change. He was president emeritus of AIGA, a fellow of NYU Institute of the Humanities, a senior faculty fellow and social enterprise fellow at Yale School of Management, and the publisher and editorial director of Design Observer, a website covering design, social innovation, urbanism and visual culture. In 2010, Drenttel was elected to the Art Directors Hall of Fame and the Alliance Graphique Internationale, and was the first Henry Wolf Resident in Graphic Design at the American Academy in Rome. He lectured widely in the U.S. and abroad.
Jennifer Morla is an American graphic designer and professor based in San Francisco. She received the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award in Communication Design in 2017.
Alexander Isley is an American graphic designer and educator.
Michael Patrick Cronan was an American graphic designer, brand strategist, adjunct professor, and fine art painter. He was one of the founders of the San Francisco Bay Area postmodern movement in graphic design, that later became known as the "Pacific Wave".
Elaine Lustig Cohen was an American graphic designer, artist and archivist. She is best known for her work as a graphic designer during the 1950s and 60s, having created over 150 designs for book covers and museum catalogs. Her work has played a significant role in the evolution of American modernist graphic design, integrating European avant-garde with experimentation to create a distinct visual vocabulary. Cohen later continued her career as a fine artist working in a variety of media. In 2011, she was named an AIGA Medalist for her achievements in graphic design.
Gail Anderson is an American graphic designer, writer, and educator known for her typographic skill, hand-lettering and poster design.
Emily Oberman is a New York-based multidisciplinary designer and a partner at design studio Pentagram. Formerly, Oberman was a co-founder of design studio Number Seventeen and a designer at Tibor Kalman's studio M & Co.
The Open Music Initiative is an initiative led by the Berklee College of Music Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship (BerkleeICE) in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab and with support from a number of major music labels, streaming services, publishers, collection societies and nearly 60 other founding entities. The mission of Open Music Initiative is to promote and advance the creation of open source standards and innovation related to music to help assure proper compensation for all creators, performers and rights holders of music.
Panos Andreas Panay is a Cyprus-born entrepreneur, executive and author. Panay currently holds the post of President of the Recording Academy alongside CEO Harvey Mason Jr. Previously he was the Senior Vice President of Global Strategy & Innovation at Berklee College of Music. He founded Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship, and founded the online platform Sonicbids, which was later acquired by Backstage Magazine. Panay is a Fellow at MIT Connection Science at the MIT Media Lab, and also founded the Open Music Initiative.
Clive Piercy was a British-American designer, author, and design educator, active for four decades in London and Los Angeles. He was noted for his use of typography, his color sense, his visual wit, and for bringing a British sensibility to the California aesthetic.