Speakers

Our keynote speakers include Scott Stowell, design director of Good Magazine and proprietor of Open; Mieke Gerritzen, global internet activist and media theorist; Stefan Bucher, artist, designer, and commentator; and Steve Heller, the world's most prolific design critic.

In addition to these keynote presenters, the main attraction at our conference is you! Come enjoy dozens of presentations and workshops led by designers, educators, and graduate students. Join the conversation! Register now at AIGA.org.

Scott Stowell

Scott Stowell is the proprietor of Open, an independent design studio that creates rewarding experiences for people that look, read, and think. Recent Open projects include identity systems for Bravo, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Planet Green, and WNYC Radio; the editorial design of Good magazine; short films for Jazz at Lincoln Center; and architectural signage for the Yale University Art Gallery.

Open's work has received awards from and/or been published by the American Institute of Architects, the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), the Art Directors Club, the Broadcast Designers Association, Communication Arts, Eye, Grafik, I.D., +81, Print, ReBrand, the Society of Environmental Graphic Designers, the Society of Publication Designers, Step Inside Design, and the Tokyo Typedirectors Club, among others.

Before starting Open, Scott was the art director of 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/NY, Scott teaches at Yale and the School of Visual Arts. In 2008, the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum named Scott the winner of the National Design Award for Communication Design.

Mieke Gerritzen

Mieke Gerritzen is a designer, artist, author, filmmaker, and educator. Born in Amsterdam in 1962, she studied audio visual media at the Rietveld Academy, graduating in 1987. In the early nineties she became a leading pioneer of digital art and design. In 2001 she started the All Media Foundation for the organization and production of movies, publications, and events like “International Browserday” in New York, Berlin, and Amsterdam and, more recently, “The Biggest Visual Power Shows.” Gerritzen is head of the design department Sandberg Institute, the post-graduate course connected to Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Mieke Gerritzen has received many prizes and gives lectures and presentations worldwide. She has authored and co-authored numerous books, including Style First, Creativity for All, and Mobile Minded.

by Robert Scoble
see the original here

Stefan G. Bucher

Stefan G. Bucher is a good egg. He is the man behind 344design.com. He is the author of the book All Access—The Making of Thirty Extraordinary Graphic Designers, and of the late illustrated column “ink & circumstance” for STEP Magazine. He has created gratuitously ambitious work for David Hockney, Tarsem, Sting, and a whole roster of brilliant artists. Along the way, he has gained a unique perspective on what it takes to be a happy and successful designer today.

Starting in November of 2006 he filmed himself blowing ink on a piece of paper, making each random blot into a monster. He linked the result to his blog and, for the next 99 days, posted a new monster every night. He found himself the seed crystal for a community of monster obsessives that used his drawings as an excuse to tell stories. His book about the experience—100 Days of Monsters—is in stores now. All the while the monsters continue to proliferate at www.dailymonster.com

Steven Heller

Steven Heller is the author, co-author or editor of over 100 books on graphic design, illustration and political art. He was an art director at The New York Times for 33 years and is a columnist for The New York Times Book Review. Heller is also the co-founder and co-chair of the MFA Design Department and co-founder of the MFA Design Criticism Department at SVA. Heller is also 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. He is the co-founder and co-chair (with Lita Talarico) of the MFA Designer as Author program at the School of Visual Arts, New York, where he lectures on the history of graphic design. Prior to this, he lectured for 14 years on the history of illustration in the MFA Illustration as Visual Essay program at the School of Visual arts. He also was director for ten years of SVA’s Modernism & Eclecticism: A History of American Graphic Design symposiums.

by Andy Bosselman
see the original here