EVENT CO-CHAIRS:
MIKE ESSL AND EMMA PRESLER
ART DIRECTION: MIKE ESSL
SITE DESIGN: THOMAS HINES
ILLUSTRATIONS: BRIAN REA

STEVEN HELLER, MODERATOR

Steven Heller wears many hats (in addition to the New York Yankees): For 33 years he has been an art director at the New York Times, originally on the OpEd Page and for almost 30 of those years for the New York Times Book Review. Currently he is a senior Art Director. He also writes book reviews and obituaries for the Times. He is the founder and co-chair of the MFA Designer as Author program at the School of Visual Arts, New York, where he lectures on the history of graphic design. With Seymour Chwast he has directed Push Pin Editions, a packager of visual books, and with his wife Louise Fili he has produced over twenty books and design products for Chronicle Books and other publishers. He has contributed hundreds of articles, critical essays, and columns to scores of design and culture journals and is the author, co-author and/or editor of over 100 books on design and popular culture. Heller is the recipient of the AIGA Medal for Lifetime Achievement in 1999, the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame Special Educators Award in 1996, The Pratt Institute Herschel Levitt Award in 2000, and the Society of Illustrators Richard Gangel Award for Art Direction in 2006.

MARC ALT

Marc Alt is president and creative director of Marc Alt + Partners, a design and brand strategy firm specializing in environmental strategy, innovation and sustainability. As a board member of the AIGA NY Chapter, Marc developed the concept for and chaired the first conference dedicated to the intersection of design, sustainability and business in New York City. The Grow conference featured senior executives from Wal-Mart, Johnson & Johnson, Osram Sylvania, IDEO, Russell Design, Cook+Fox Architects, Material ConneXion, UN Global Compact and many other leaders of industry who gathered to discuss the power of harnessing design to address the challenges of climate change and supply chain transformation. Marc is co-chair the AIGA Center for Sustainable Design, an initiative of AIGA, The Professional Association for Design.  Beginning in Spring of 2008, Marc will be teaching "Sustainable Design for the 21st Century" at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

FRANK BASEMAN

Frank Baseman is a co-curator of the exhibition The Graphic Imperative: International Posters for Peace, Social Justice and The Environment, 1965–2005. He was co-chair of Revolution: Philadelphia, a national AIGA Design Education Conference (2005), and author/curator of The Tolerance Project, a student poster design competition and exhibition (2002). He has written articles for Voice: AIGA Journal of Design and The Education of a Graphic Designer (2nd ed., Allworth Press, 2005). He was named a “person to watch in 2006” by GDUSA Magazine. Frank Baseman has served on the national board of directors of AIGA, the professional association for design (2003–2006) and as the founding chair of the steering committee for the AIGA Design Education Community of Interest (2001–2006). He continues to serve on the advisory committee for this Community. Frank Baseman is also an Associate Professor in the Graphic Design Communication program at Philadelphia University, where he has taught since 1998.

NICHOLAS BLECHMAN

During the day, Nicholas Blechman is Art Director of The New York Times Book Review. By night he runs Knickerbocker Design, a one-man graphic design firm specializing in illustration and print work. Blechman edits and designs the award winning political underground magazine NOZONE, featured in the Cooper Hewitt’s Design Triennial. He has taught design at the Maryland Institute College of Art and School of Visual Arts. Blechman co-authors a series of limited edition illustration books, One Hundred Percent, with Christoph Niemann. He is a member of Alliance Graphique International, and former board member of the New York Chapter of the AIGA. He is author of "Fresh Dialogue One: New Voices in Graphic Design","Nozone IX: EMPIRE" and most recently, "100% EVIL".

SEYMOUR CHWAST

Seymour Chwast was born in New York City and is a graduate of The Cooper Union, where he studied illustration and graphic design. He is a founding partner of the celebrated Push Pin Studios, whose distinct style has had a worldwide influence on contemporary visual communications. The studio’s name was changed to The Pushpin Group, of which Mr. Chwast is the director. Mr. Chwast’s clients have included leading corporations, advertising agencies and publishing companies both here and abroad. His designs and illustrations have been used in advertising, animated films, corporate and environmental graphics, publications, posters, packaging and record covers. His designs and illustrations have been exhibited in major galleries and museums in the United States, Europe, Japan, Brazil and Russia. Mr. Chwast and Push Pin were honored at the Louvre in Paris in a two-month retrospective exhibition titled The Push Pin Style. He has had several one-man shows of his paintings, sculptures and prints in this country. His posters are in the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, The Cooper-Hewitt Museum of The Smithsonian Institution, The Library of Congress, The Gutenberg Museum and The Israel Museum among others. The American Institute of Graphic Arts awarded him the medal for 1985. He has an honorary Ph.D in Fine Arts from the Parsons School of Design and is in the Art Directors Hall of Fame.

CARIN GOLDBERG

Carin Goldberg, Principle of Carin Goldberg Design, was born in New York City and studied at the Cooper Union School of Art. She began her career as a staff designer at CBS Television, CBS Records and Atlantic Records before establishing her own firm, Carin Goldberg Design, in 1982. Over the following two decades Carin designed hundreds of book jackets for all the major American publishing houses, including Simon & Schuster, Random House, Alfred A. Knopf, Farrar Straus & Giroux, Harper Collins, Doubleday and Hyperion, and dozens of album covers for record labels such as Warner Bros., Motown, Nonesuch, Interscope and EMI. In recent years her image making has expanded to publication design and brand consulting for clients including The Gap (Forth & Towne) and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Carin’s work is in the permanent collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; the Cooper-Hewitt, New York; and the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, China. Carin began a two-year term as president of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA/NY) in 2006; she served on the chapter’s board from 2002 to 2004. She has been a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) since 1999 and serves on its board. She has taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York City since 1983. She is the author and designer of Catalog (Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 2001) and is currently at work on a second book titled Home.

CHRIS HACKER

Chris Hacker recently joined Johnson & Johnson and is responsible for bringing strong brand identity and sustainable business practices to the company. In this position Chris leads all creative processes for packaging design and brand imagery. Prior to joining Johnson & Johnson Chris was Senior VP of Global Marketing and Design for Aveda and directed visual merchandising, packaging, store design and advertising. Aveda was recently awarded the prestigious Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for corporate excellence. Hacker shares his experience working with ecologically sensitive clients and corporations.

RANDY HUNT

Randy J. Hunt is founder of Citizen Scholar Inc., a design consultancy that works with non-profits, social entrepreneurs, artists, and creative businesses. He is co-founder of Supercorp, a Brooklyn-based web development company that build tools for creative commerce. Randy is founder and director of The Amazing Project, a non-profit organization which publicizes and promotes the actions of amazing people and connects them with supporters & volunteers. He is a contributor to the design blogs DESIGNY and Speak Up, and his writing and interviews appear in AIGA’s VOICE, Lemon Magazine, Massive Change, and other publications.

ALAN JACOBSON

Before founding ex;it, Alan founded and led the environmental graphic design firm AGS. Over 31 years Alan has designed for clients such as: Johnson & Johnson, Kaiser Permanente, University of Pennsylvania, The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Merrill Lynch, MetLife, Glaxo, Sutter Health and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Throughout his career, Alan has always pushed to raise standards and help pioneer fresh approaches to environmental design. Alan twice won the SEGD (Society for Environmental Graphic Design) international design Honor Award for his work with the Main Line Health / Lankenau Hospital Wayfinding program in 2006 and his community-building work in Rwanda. ex;it is the latest example of Alan pushing the limits with new ideas. The firm practices a holistic approach to environmental graphic design, touchpointing that involves users directly in the process. The goal is to pioneer new understanding and new thinking about how humans react and communicate in their surroundings, and to manifest the ideas in people centric solutions.

KRISTIN JOHNSON

Kristin Johnson co-founded Practical Small Projects, a non-profit that is using solar power as a catalyst for new health, educational, and income-generating opportunities in Malian villages. Born and educated in Minnesota (University of MN), she pursued design in New York City. Her first stop was an internship at Milton Glaser’s studio. After working for NYC2012 (New York’s bid for the 2012 Olympics), Kristin found opportunities to work on some interesting projects at Pentagram, Graphis, and WORKSHOP. Meanwhile she became interested in sustainability, and increasingly confident in the designer’s role in solving the major problems of our day. She attended a sustainable design conference and began taking on responsibilities she was wholly unqualified for, such as being the Greening Coordinator for the Craigslist Foundation’s Non-Profit Boot Camp. When Kristin met a woman in an East Village restaurant who was training Africans in solar technology, she saw the opportunity for something great, and ventured off to Mali, Africa. This habit of pursuing unique opportunities has engendered a very broad view of design, which is currently employed in the role of an Envisioner at Design Continuum.

BOBBY MARTIN

Bobby C. Martin Jr. was born in Hampton, Virginia. He studied design and illustration at Virginia Commonwealth University. After moving to New York City to work in magazines, Bobby attended the MFA design program at the School of Visual Arts. He is currently the Design Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center where his focus is on building the brand by visualizing the music, a challenge that extends across print and advertising, as well as venue and exhibit design. He has also worked at Ogilvy & Mather’s Brand Integration Group (BIG) with clients that include NYC2012, CNN, Coca-Cola, Fanta, Sprite, Hellmann’s, Hershey’s, Miller Brewing Company, Dupont and the New York Times Magazine. He has won a Sappi Grant for his work as designer and brand consultant for the Abyssinian Baptist Church of Harlem, New York, and is about to launch a new identity system with the Museum for African Art. Bobby serves on the board of AIGA/NY and teaches typography & design at the School of Visual Arts.

LARA MCCORMICK

Lara McCormick is the creator of Stop and Start Over, a resource which helps addicts and alcoholics find a path toward recovery. Based on her thesis from the School of Visual Arts Designer as Author program, the project recently received Sappi Papers ‘Ideas that Matter’ award. Lara currently freelances and teaches design at the School of Visual Arts.

PHIL PATTON

Phil Patton is the author of many books on design and culture. A contributing editor to ID and Departures magazines, he writes on automobile design for the New York Times. Among his most recent titles are Bug: The Strange Mutations of the World’s Most Popular Automobile and Michael Graves Designs: The Art Of The Everyday Object. He contributed to the book and show Blobjects And Beyond: The New Fluidity In Design, at the San Jose Museum of Art. His other books include Open Road, a study of the American highway, Made in USA, a look at American design and technology, and Dreamland, on the lore of aviation and secrecy. He has written frequently for Artforum, Wired, Esquire and other publications. He has served as consultant for several exhibitions including most recently Curves of Steel: Streamlined Automobile Design at Phoenix Art Museum (2007) , and Different Roads: Automobiles for the Next Century at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in 1999. His collection of coffee cup lids was the subject of a show called Caution: Contents Hot earlier this year at the Cincinnati Museum of Art. He has taught at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and is on the faculty of the new Design Crit Program at the School of Visual Arts.

MARK RANDALL

Mark Randall is principal of Worldstudio, a graphic design agency in New York City whose clients range the profit/non-profit spectrum. Worldstudio has won industry awards and has been featured in a range of books and publications on graphic design. Worldstudio is unique because of its synergistic relationship with Worldstudio Foundation, a non-profit organization that offers scholarships and mentoring programs in the fine and applied arts, for which Randall serves as President. The first non-profit in the U.S. devoted exclusively to encouraging social responsibility in the design and arts professions, Worldstudio Foundation dares young artists to dream—of new lives, new careers and new solutions for the world in which we live. In addition to lecturing on design and social responsibility at schools and industry conferences, Randall has taught at Parson’s School of Design and Hartford University.

SCOTT STOWELL

Scott Stowell is the proprietor of Open, an independent design studio that creates rewarding experiences for people who look, read, and think. Open projects include redesigns of the tv networks Bravo, Nick at Nite, and Trio; the new visual identity for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society; and the editorial design of Good magazine. Before starting Open, Scott was the art director of Benetton's Colors magazine in Rome and a senior designer at M&Co. New York. Before that, he received a BFA in graphic design from Rhode Island School of Design. A former vice president of AIGA New York, Scott writes and lectures about design and teaches at Yale University and the School of Visual Arts.

LISA STRAUSFELD

Lisa Strausfeld joined Pentagram as a partner in 2002. Her work lies at the intersection of physical and virtual space: where information structures and physical structures meet, and where navigation of information and navigation of buildings is joined in a single experience. Her team specializes in digital information design projects that range from software prototypes and websites to interpretive displays and large-scale media installations. In addition to broad publication of her design work over the last ten years, Lisa holds two patents relating to user interfaces and intelligent information search and retrieval. In 2006, she was named to the Senior Scientist program at the Gallup Organization. She teaches interactive and site-specific design in the Graphic Design program at the Yale School of Art.

TOPOS GRAPHICS: SETH LABENZ AND ROY RUB

Topos Graphics calls home the place where thought and form meet, and they live and work with graphics in New York City. Specializing in ideas for print, they’re interested in projects that both raise questions and point toward answers. Small or large in scale and intimate or public in sentiment, their work is propelled by a desire to see words and images actively participate across multiple platforms.