Thomas Carlyle Ford is an American fashion designer and filmmaker. He launched his eponymous brand in 2005, having previously been the creative director at Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent. Ford wrote and directed the films A Single Man (2009) and Nocturnal Animals (2016). From 2019 to 2022 he was chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America.
IDEO is a design and consulting firm with offices in the U.S., England, and China. It was founded in Palo Alto, California, in 1991. The company's 500 staff uses a design thinking approach to design products, services, environments, brands, and digital experiences.
Parsons School of Design, known colloquially as Parsons, is a private art and design college located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhattan art academies in protest of limited creative autonomy, Parsons is one of the oldest schools of art and design in New York.
The Chelsea College of Arts is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, a public art university in London, England.
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) is the architecture school of Columbia University, a private research university in New York City. It is regarded as an important and prestigious architecture school. It is also home to the Masters of Science program in Advanced Architectural Design, Historic Preservation, Real Estate Development, Urban Design, and Urban Planning.
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."
The International Best Dressed Hall of Fame List was founded by fashionista Eleanor Lambert in 1940 as an attempt to boost the reputation of American fashion at the time. The American magazine Vanity Fair is currently in charge of the List after Lambert left the responsibility to "four friends at Vanity Fair" in 2002, a year before her death.
Helvetica is a 2007 American independent feature-length documentary film about typography and graphic design, centered on the Helvetica typeface. Directed by Gary Hustwit, it was released in 2007 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the typeface's introduction in 1957 and is considered the first of the Design Trilogy by the director.
Simon Njami is a writer and an independent curator, lecturer, art critic and essayist.
Robb Montgomery is a journalist based in Berlin. He produces prize-winning documentary films with small cameras and is the author of textbooks and certificate courses in mobile journalism.
The American Federation of Arts (AFA) is a nonprofit organization that creates art exhibitions for presentation in museums around the world, publishes exhibition catalogues, and develops education programs. The organization’s founding in 1909 was endorsed by Theodore Roosevelt and spearheaded by Secretary of State Elihu Root and eminent art patrons and artists of the day. The AFA’s mission is to enrich the public’s experience and understanding of the visual arts, and this is accomplished through its exhibitions, catalogues, and public programs. To date, the AFA has organized or circulated approximately 3,000 exhibitions that have been viewed by more than 10 million people in museums in every state, as well as in Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
David M. Kelley is an American engineer, designer, businessman, and educator. He is co-founder of the design firm IDEO and a professor at Stanford University. He has received several honors for his contributions to design and design education.
Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec are brothers noted for their design work, which has been featured in publications and museums globally — and spans a wide range from tables and chairs to tableware, rugs, textile walls, office furniture, ceramics, art objects and urban projects.
Gary Hustwit is an American independent filmmaker and photographer. He is best known for his design documentaries, which examine the impact of trends in graphic design, typography, industrial design, architecture, and urban planning. He told Dwell magazine, "I like the idea of taking a closer look at the things we take for granted and changing the way people think about them." In addition to filmmaking, he has been active in the independent music and book publishing industries.
Shashi Caan a design futurist, educator and author, her dedication to furthering human betterment through and by design is reflected in her 25-year design career.
Andrew Blauvelt is a Japanese-American curator, designer, educator, and writer. Since 2015 he has served as director of the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
Ken Miller is a curator / writer-editor. He has presented exhibitions in the United States, Europe and Asia, often with private sponsorship. He has published several books of art, fashion and photography and initiated a recurring multimedia feature for T: The New York Times Style Magazine.
Maison Margiela, formerly Maison Martin Margiela, is a French luxury fashion house founded by Belgian designer Martin Margiela and Jenny Meirens in 1988 and headquartered in Paris. The house produces both haute couture-inspired artisanal collections and ready-to-wear collections, with the former influencing the designs of the latter. Product lines include womenswear, menswear, jewellery, footwear, accessories, leather goods, perfumes and household goods. Known for deconstructive and avant-garde designs with unconventional materials, Maison Margiela has traditionally held live shows in unusual settings, for example empty metro stations and street corners. Models' faces are often obscured by fabric or long hair to direct attention to the clothes and design. Margiela resigned as creative designer in 2009 and John Galliano was appointed to the role in 2014.
Heather Martin is a British designer, especially recognized for her work in interaction design. She is Head of Interaction Design at Fjord in London.
