Boback Firoozbakht is a Persian-American designer and developer, currently completing his Masters of Interior Architecture, Intervention and Adaptive Reuse at the Rhode Island School of Design. He believes that the environment can influence the decisions we make and inspire us to build in certain ways. Upon completion, he plans to pursue a Masters of Real Estate Development. Subsequently, the combined knowledge of design and passion for business will result in responsible and sustainable design...

Bruce Nussbaum is a leading advocate for design thinking and innovation. Former assistant managing-editor at BusinessWeek, Nussbaum founded the award-winning “Design & Innovation” online channel and NussbaumOnDesign blog in 2005, as well as the quarterly IN—Inside Innovation supplement in 2006. As such, he was named one of the 40 most powerful people in design by ID magazine and one of the most influential design thinkers in the book Glimmer. Now professor of Innovation and Design at the...

Doug Pray has directed a number of critically acclaimed feature-length documentary films about American subcultures, artists, and maverick characters. He received an MFA from University of California Los Angeles’s Graduate School of Film and Television. He has served on the documentary juries of the Sundance, Silverdocs, AFI Fest and SXSW film festivals, and is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, as well as the Directors Guild of America. Premiering at Sundance...

Eames Demetrios is a filmmaker and the geographer-at-large for Kcymaerxthaere, a parallel universe largely coexistent with our linear world. Described as “three-dimensional fiction”, it is like a novel with every page in a different place – he has installed more than 65 sites in 10 countries. In addition, as director of the Eames Office, founded by his grandparents, Charles and Ray Eames, he communicates, preserves and extends their work. This has evolved into many products and...

After studying at the Technical University of Delft for two years, Frank Tjepkema graduated in 1996 from the Design Academy Eindhoven. Following this he obtained an MA degree in 1998 from the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. Tjepkema established Tjep in Amsterdam in 2001. The studio constitutes a small team that works on projects varying from lamps, vases, jewellery and furniture, to brand identities and interiors for the likes of Droog, Ikea, British Airways and Heineken. Tjep has twice...

Han Feng is one of the most sought-after fashion designers in the world, not only for her clothing and accessories, but also increasingly for her costume and exhibition designs. She has designed costumes for award-winning operas including Madama Butterfly in London (2005), The Bonesetter’s Daughter in San Francisco (2008) and Handel’s Semele in Brussels (2009). She has also worked on a number of films including the upcoming Kung Fu Kid. Born in Nanjing, China, she graduated from the China...

Harry Pearce joined Pentagram’s London office as a partner in 2006 having co-founded and grown Lippa Pearce to become one of the UK’s most respected design agencies over the previous 16 years. Encompassing the public and private sectors, local and global charities, and commercial enterprises, his diverse clients include The Co-operative, Halfords, Phaidon Press, the Science Museum, Saks Fifth Avenue, Shakespeare’s Globe and Boots. To each he brings his own brand of intelligence combined...

Born in Cape Town in 1958, political cartoonist and satirist Jonathan Shapiro was detained by security police in 1988, shortly before leaving on a Fulbright Scholarship to study media arts at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Better known as Zapiro, he has published 11 cartoon collections and held solo exhibitions in New York, London and Frankfurt, as well as participating in numerous international group shows. He has won a category in the CNN African Journalist of the Year Awards (...

Born in Tokyo in 1972 and raised in Chigasaki, Manabu Mizuno studied graphic design at Tama Art University. After graduating in 1996, he joined the advertising company Pablo Production and then went on to join Draft Corporation where he worked in advertising and design. In 1999 he established “good design company”. As art and creative director, Mizuno works in various fields including graphic design, advertising, imaging, product design, shop planning, space design, product...

From her award-winning magazine, Martha Stewart Living, to her bestselling product lines, Martha Stewart shares the creative principles and practical ideas that have made her America’s most trusted guide to stylish living. Millions of consumers rely on Martha Stewart as their arbiter of style and taste and their guide to all aspects of everyday living – from cooking and entertaining to decorating and gardening, and much more. Stewart’s unique business sense and creative vision...

After receiving his Masters of Fine Arts in Design and Technology from Parsons The New School for Design, Michael Edwards joined the school’s research faculty. He is charged with designing social networks and games with public and educational interest in mind. His contributions to design have addressed issues including malnutrition, sustainable architecture, malaria, science education and the history of New York. As an instructor, he teaches his students to bring new technical ideas into their...

The Cape Town-born Oliver Hermanus started his undergraduate degree in Film, Media and Visual Studies at the University of Cape Town and completed it at the University of California after receiving an exchange programme scholarship. Upon returning to South Africa, he worked as a press photographer for a national news agency for 18 months before receiving a private scholarship to attend the London Film School. His graduation film, Shirley Adams, premiered at the Locarno International Film...

Revital Cohen recently attained a Masters in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art in London, which followed a BA in Contemporary Furniture Design from Buckinghamshire New University. As a designer and researcher she develops critical objects and provocative scenarios exploring the juxtaposition of the natural with the artificial. Her work spans across various media and includes collaborations with scientists, animal breeders and medical consultants.

Stefan G Bucher is the man behind 344 Design and the Daily Monster – an online drawing and storytelling experiment. His monsters have invaded computer screens all over the world, and their savage adolescence is chronicled in the book 100 Days of Monsters (2008). Under 344 Design, he has created gratuitously ambitious designs for Sting, David Hockney, director Tarsem and the New York Times, and works with a whole roster of brilliant, driven clients. His time-lapse drawings also currently...

Tomas Kral completed his Masters in Luxury Design at ECAL, Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2009. The Slovakian-born, Swiss-based product designer has since opened his own studio and finds inspiration by observing people’s needs and everyday situations with humour and distance. By capturing specific things, twisting them and then infusing them with poetry, Kral designs accessible and comprehensible objects that combine traditional materials with revolutionary technologies. 

Troika is a multi-disciplinary art and design practice founded in 2003 by Conny Freyer, Eva Rucki and Sebastien Noel, who met while studying at the Royal College of Art in London. With backgrounds in graphic and communication, art, product design and engineering, Troika has developed a variety of self-initiated and commissioned projects that are both engaging and demanding to the user, from printed matter to product design and custom art installations. Their approach focuses on the...

The Wooster Collective are husband-and-wife team Marc and Sara Schiller. Celebrating street art, their mission is to discover and document authentic art experiences via salons, books, gallery shows and, of course, their renowned website. Having documented street art from around the world for the past seven years, they have covered over 2 000 artists and are fortunate to have become familiar with the street artists’ stories and sources of inspiration. The Schillers were behind the...