Josh Higgins has been on a wild ride most of his life. The once punk rocker has gone from traveling the country making and playing music to establishing himself as a force in the design world. Along the way, he was constantly evolving his art and mindset in terms of the role art and design can play in one’s community and the world at large.

Driven by a powerful aesthetic and fearless attitude wrapped in social awareness, Josh’s design activism led him to be hand-picked for the role as design director on President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. This was a far cry from the San Diego skateboard kid, but Josh’s journey just kept weaving wildly.

Josh is currently a Senior Creative Director at Facebook on the Building 8 team which is focused on building new hardware products to advance Facebook’s efforts in virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence. For the last four years, he was on The Factory team where he was fortunate to work on a variety of projects from company and product identities, the Facebook brand book which ensures consistency for those identities, overall brand campaigns, the personalized video program, and future endeavors.

Somewhere in all of that, he’s created award-winning work for clients such as HP, Yamaha, Fender Guitars, Tony Hawk Foundation, Perry Ellis International, Newcastle Brown Ale, and Life Technologies. His wild ride continues as a husband and father, and he somehow travels for speaking engagements and still finds time to play music. (more…)

Amy Nicole Schwartz is a design troublemaker, specializing in branding, digital experiences, and games. She is currently the Design Director at Cards Against Humanity, the wildly successful and hilariously inappropriate party game, and its “boring business company” spinoff, Blackbox. Schwartz sets the creative vision for her companies’ games, projects and subversive PR campaigns.

But Amy is much more than a designer for a comedically dark card game; her resume reads like a design dream. She was the winner of Command X at the 2015 AIGA National Design Conference; other recognitions include the Emerging Designer Award by AIGA Chicago, Finalist for Young Designer of the Year by the Net Awards, and the recipient of the AIGA Chicago What’s Next Grant in 2014. She has been featured in numerous publications, including Frame Publisher’s Masterclass, Print Mag online, HOW Design and Brand New.

Blah, blah, blah. We get it, Schwartz, you’re super talented and creative. In addition to all that, Amy founded Liminal Space, a design initiative that promotes experimentation, community, and dialogue within Chicago’s thriving design, art, and technology scenes. Her past clients and collaborators include the Cranbrook Art Museum, Google, and Bright Bright Great.  (more…)

Stefan Sagmeister is a rock star in the field of design. The man has designed for the Rolling Stones, The Talking Heads, Lou Reed, HBO, Levi’s, The New York Times and The Guggenheim Museum, and many other clients you wish you had. He combines seriousness and a sense of humor in his work, and continually pushes the boundary of what is classic and what is of-the-moment.

Stefan is the co-founder of the famous design firm, Sagmeister & Walsh, which he established first then expanded in partnership with Jessica Walsh. His intriguing and provocative designs have captivated most, angered some, and redefined the status of graphic designers, with intrigue rarely seen before.

Exhibitions on his work have been mounted in New York, Philadelphia, Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul, Paris, Lausanne, Zurich, Vienna, Prague, Cologne & Berlin. He teaches in the graduate department at SVA, and lectures extensively.

The art director, originally from Austria with a home base in New York City, recently co-directed a documentary, The Happy Film, which premiered this spring at Tribeca Film Festival. He probably won’t like this introduction, but we are hoping he prints it and burns the piece of paper, then uses those ashes in his next design campaign. (more…)

From boot camp to burritos, Christopher Ayres thinks about designing in terms of pop culture, and who he would want to eat and talk with, using references to comedians like Aziz Ansari, or the films of Johnny Depp. He has become a go-to champion of rebranding major identities.

Christopher has dedicated 13 years to the publishing, design and advertising industries. He has worked with some of the most iconic brands in the world, including Visa, Nike, Coca-Cola, JetBlue and Crayola. He was the Creative Director at MRY, then went on to oversee a complete overhaul of design and brand strategy for celeb-favorite Barry’s Bootcamp, transitioning them from a niche boutique fitness company to a full-fledged lifestyle brand.

From New Yorker to Californian, he says he still feels like that gawky, small town kid from Kansas at heart. Christopher has come a long way. He now serves as Creative Director for Taco Bell, and his reasoning behind the leap is simple, “Because tacos.” (more…)

You may have never heard of Chris Costello, but you definitely know his work. He is a graphic designer, illustrator, typographer and he just so happens to be the guy that created the font Papyrus. Yep, that’s right, the typeface used on billions of computers worldwide was created by this man and sold for today’s equivalent of $2,500 when he was 23 years old.

However, Chris Costello is so much more than a sometimes celebrated, often times insulted font. Chris is also an Artistic Infusion Program Artist for The United States Mint. Since 2010, Chris has contributed drawings to over 30 United States Mint coin and medal design programs and is credited with the designs on 14 U.S. coins and one Congressional Gold Medal.

Chris has created several other original font designs, as well as illustrations and custom lettering for clients including Random House, Simon and Schuster, Oxford University Press and HarperCollins. As a fine artist, he enjoys drawing and painting historic architecture, landscapes, and portraits, as well as sculpting in clay and plaster. He also used to do Tae Kwon Do and can probably beat you up, so watch what you say about Papyrus. (more…)

Joshua Taylor is a prolific digital product designer and startup advisor who helps companies launch new creations. He works across user testing, high level UX and UI design, interactive and motion prototyping to design products that are incredibly easy and delightful to use. More than desirable products, he helps design successful and sustainable companies.

Born and raised in Orlando, Florida, he has evolved into the go-to design guy for massive brands such as Evernote and Airbnb. At Evernote, he was a Design Director, and at Airbnb he worked on major new features across their web app, as well as Android and iOS. He really knows when the sweet details amount to something spectacular.

Joshua’s design philosophy is to move fast, make and finish things. He revels in getting to know users and talking to leadership in order to figure out what a product should be. In short, he builds products for the people that actually use them, making their experiences more rich and engaging. (more…)

Jared Erondu is a young man of many talents. First and foremost, he is a designer, but he is also a startup advisor, a prolific writer and a talented photographer.

He has managed to uniquely set himself apart in the design and tech industries, starting with his role as creative director during the early days of Teespring. He has worked with companies like MIT, Sparrow Mail, Omada Health, Treehouse and Y Combinator, just to name a few.

Jared has served as a mentor to some of the most prestigious venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz and Greylock Partners. He is wrapping up the building of a design community tool called Playbook. The one place for all the best design thinking, Playbook organizes meaningful questions from the design community, also giving designers a simple way to respond. (more…)

Zachary Petit (known as Zac) wears a lot of hats. He is a freelance journalist, magazine editor, photo dabbler, and lover of all things writerly, design-ish and nerd-like. He is the content director of HOW magazine, and editor-in-chief of the award–winning publication PRINT, but he is also the self-made force behind a ton of his own professional and truly artistic devices.

Zac has published numerous photos and thousands of articles, covering everything from the secret lives of mall Santas to creative legends. His words regularly appear in National Geographic, Mental_Floss, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and many other outlets. He is the author of several books, including his most recent, Treat Ideas Like Cats, which came out in the Fall of 2016.

Zachary Petit is many things, and we are thankful that he took time out of his being-many-things schedule to answer our dumb questions.

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To say the least, Nicole Jacek is determined. Her slogan is “It’s not about how good you are, it’s about how good you want to be.” She is also a thinker, and her work thinks big, because, like Nicole, it is fearless, fresh and hyper-focused. Nicole Jacek could be considered an avant-garde designer, and all it takes is one look at her website, to see that she bucks the trends in every possible way.

She has learned at the hands of the masters, including Stefan Sagmeister and Ian Anderson. An award-winning graphic designer, with honors from the Type Directors Club, ADA, Print magazine, D&AD, and Red Dot, Nicole embodies the spirit of design that pushes the envelope. Born in Germany, she has lived in the UK, New York City, and set up shop in Los Angeles to start her own studio.

Nicole’s visceral work has been published in numerous magazines, newspapers, books, and websites all over the world. She works or has worked with brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Coca-Cola, 55DSL/Diesel, Harvard University, Vitra, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among many others. Now on to the good stuff.

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Dan Cassaro is a wise man. A graphic designer, illustrator, animator and an excellent hand-letterer, he spends his talent and time using typography to make words accountable for themselves.

Dan is the founding force behind a small but scrappy design practice based in Brooklyn, called Young Jerks, which focuses on type, lettering, logo design and 70s rock. His client work includes Carhartt, Billabong, The New York Times, ESPN, Rolling Stone, Levi’s and Lands’ End, just to name a few.

In his words, he is just trying to herd his horses. In our words, he is saying big things with simple words. On top of travel and design, Dan and his wife just announced that they are expecting their first child. Congrats, Dan! (more…)