What does one say about someone as esteemed as Chip Kidd? If, for some reason, you don’t recognize his name, surely you will recognize (and be in awe) of his work.

Chip Kidd is an icon. His work in book packaging and design has revolutionized the game. As a graphic designer for Alfred A. Knopf since 1986, Kidd has designed shelves full of books, including classics you can picture in a snap: Jurassic Park, Naked by David Sedaris, No Country for Old Men, The Secret History by Donna Tartt, 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, and that is only listing a fraction of his portfolio.

Jason Kernevich and Dustin Summers are self-made designers in the truest sense of the word. They have been combining crackpot ideas, dreaming and drawing up things as The Heads of State for a very, very long time.

They have created award-winning posters, book covers, as well as branding and illustration for clients such as Nike, the New York Times, Starbucks, the School of Visual Arts, the United States Postal Service, and many, many musicians and artists.

Dusty and Jason are teachers, at Tyler School of Art, where they both studied. The duo have their own apparel collection, called Pilot & Captain. What started out as an experiment between friends has grown into a stately design empire.

Scott Allen Hill draws. Yes, he is a designer and an illustrator, but all that comes from his lifelong love of drawing, forever championed by his grandmother.

A native of Oklahoma, currently living, working and playing in Denver, Colorado, Scott Allen Hill was the Art Director and co-founder of Foundry Collective, as well as the principal of his own Studio Mast, which is now galloping at full gate in a great direction.

Scott Allen Hill (SAH) and Mast have done some amazing design and branding work for everything from coffee roasters to commercial film studios. His clients include Huddle Collective in Sydney, Australia, the record-keeping ROAR Group, Winston/ Realty in Beverly Hills, AMM Designs, NautixLabs, and trust us, that is naming just a few of his illustrious clients.

SAH has a dog named Eames, a wife named Ashlee, and a daughter named Sylva. We thank him for participating in our Dumb Questions for Smart Designers.

Timothy Goodman is an outstanding designer, illustrator & art director based in New York City, where he runs his own studio.

Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Tim is a proud design troublemaker who began his career as a book jacket designer at Simon & Schuster after graduating from the School of Visual Arts, where he now molds young minds.

His clients include Airbnb, Google, Ford, J.Crew, Target, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and many more. Previously, Timothy worked in-house at Apple Inc. and with the experiential design firm Collins. He has received awards from most major design and illustration publications including the ADC Young Guns, GDUSA’s “People To Watch” and Print’s “New Visual Artist.”

Timothy co-created the blog and book, 40 Days of Dating, with Jessica Walsh, that has received 15 million unique visitors and whose film rights were optioned by Warner Bros. His Instagram writing series, Memories of a Girl I Never Knew, exhibited in Paris. His second book, Sharpie Art Workshop, is out now.

James Victore was recently called an existential cowboy, in so many words, by Print Magazine. He is a designer, an art director, an author, an activist and a teacher. He runs an independent studio hell-bent on world domination.

James likes to work on instinct and inspiration. He is the type of designer to get more kismet from a delicious meal or an adventure with family than from sitting in front of his computer. He is a spirited renegade in the world of design. His smile lights up the world from under his signature mustache.

Veerle Pieters is an outstanding, mystical designer. She started her career on her own, before photoshop and illustrator. She is a mostly self-taught enterprise with the desire of heart.

Her career began in 1992 as a one-woman business focusing on logos and print. In 1995, she added website design, user interfaces, and multimedia development to her arsenal.

Her company, Duoh! became an official legal entity in 2000, and is now the studio of Veerle and Geert Leyseele, who are partners in work and life.

Our good friend Gui Borchert is a dapper designer and art director, originally from Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, now residing in Los Angeles. However, he has made interesting stops in Utah, London, and New York. He is one of the most recognizable designers in the world, and has done tremendous work for the likes of Nike, Adidas, Google, MTV, The World Cup, and even President Obama, just to name a select few.

Gui is passionate about all forms of visual communication as means to express an idea; a thought, a concept, an emotion, a message or even a visual experiment. He wields art and design as a weapon of the world, working across several mediums, including typography, photography, and illustration.

It was an honor to honor our good friend, and ask him some dumb questions. Obrigado, Keith!

Don Clark is one half of the amazing design duo, Invisible Creature, an awesome name for a firm, because designers are supposed to be invisible creatures, striking emotions from shapes and colors.

Don has always been creative, embracing his passions. He and his brother started a punk rock band in the 1990s. And in the year 2000, Don and his brother turned to design, developing album covers, posters, and logos for many of the acts they’d met through music.

Don is now a husband, a father and a farmer, still doing work on music packaging—even having earned a few Grammy nominations along the way— but that’s just part of the focus of Invisible Creature.

The creative firm’s clients include Target, Nike, Hasbro, Google, Nordstrom, The New York Times, and dozens of other heavy hitters. For Don, the coolest perk of his work is the diversity of his clients and the variety of projects, from toys to tunes.

We first found out about Harvey Shepard through his wonderfully gorgeous book, Oh Beautiful Beer, which began as a blog dedicated to his love of beer and label design. When we researched the author, we discovered that he is an awesome design ninja at heart.

He hails from Massachusetts, but now resides in Seattle. He travels a lot and he mostly tweets about baseball, but Harvey’s designs focus on creating effective and memorable solutions. He specializes in logo design, branding, web and print design. With a rich arsenal of work including musicians, breweries, agencies, clubs and events, Mr. Shepard is sure to guide us to the promise land.

So many cool things are coming out of Kansas City right now. Historically, Kansas City has always been a creative hub, with Hallmark being located there and Walt Disney being born there. Tad Carpenter is one of the coolest things coming up and out of KC.

A designer with an illustrator’s heart and an illustrator with a designer’s mind, Tad was lucky enough to grow up the son of two artists smack dab in the middle of the midwest. His father is an illustrator and has been a creative director for Hallmark Cards for nearly 40 years. His mother is a talented fiber artist.

The studio he runs with his wife, Carpenter Collective, has an overall approach to branding, strategy, and design that has garnered wonderful clients ranging from Target to Conan O’Brien, Macy’s, Coca-Cola, Ray Ban, Nick Jr, MTV and Adobe. Tad’s work has appeared in numerous publications and he has written/illustrated over a dozen children’s books. Since 2009, Tad also teaches Graphic Design at the University of Kansas, and we are so thrilled he did our ‘Dumb Questions’ over the phone while driving home.