Jake Barton
Gaby Brink
founder and creative director, Tomorrow Partners, Berkeley, CA
Gaby Brink is the founder and executive creative director of Tomorrow Partners, a creative agency that partners with clients to build the future of their brands and innovations. Brink leads a team of diverse talents to transcends tidy disciplines and create brand-centric communication programs that turn heads and grab hearts.
Tomorrow Partners works with a wide spectrum of top global marketers and emerging companies, and because it believes in working for a brighter future, it fervently applies its creative firepower to nurture environmental and social causes. Gaby serves as Sustainability Chair on the board of AIGA SF and is an Advisor to the Center for Sustainable Design, where she promotes the integration of sustainability strategies to design and business communities at large.
Michael Beirut
Michael Patrick Cronan
partner, Cronan, Berkeley, CA
Michael Patrick Cronan is an American graphic designer, artist, and an American Institute of Graphic Art Fellow. One of the founders of the San Francisco Bay Area postmodern movement in graphic design that became known as the Pacific Wave, Cronan is a recognized corporate identity designer, acclaimed for the naming and the identities of TiVo, Verio, Indigo, Onyx, and Crimson computer lines for Silicon Graphics (SGI).
Cronan studied at the California College of the Arts and Crafts (CCAC), now California College of the Arts (CCA), where he later served as adjunct professor of graphic design from 1981 to 2001. Cronan and partner Karin Hibma established the design firm Michael Patrick Cronan Design dba in 1980 with clients including Levi Strauss & Co., Apple Computer Inc., Estee Lauder Origins, and Williams-Sonoma Inc. as well as The San Francisco Symphony, the Oakland Museum, The Pickle Family Circus, and SFMOMA. He was a founding member of the American Institute of Graphic Art (AIGA) chapter in San Francisco and the AIGASF chapter president after serving on the AIGA national board for three years.
In 1985 Cronan was included with 35 American designers in "Pacific Wave," an exhibition of graphic design curated by Giorgio Camuffo at Museo Fortuny in Venice, Italy. His graphic design work is currently in the permanent collections of SFMOMA, The Denver Art Museum, The Library of Congress in Washington, DC, The Smithsonian National Postal Museum, and London's Victoria and Albert Museum.
Chris Calori
Thom Faulders
founder, Faulders Studio, Berkeley, CA
Thom Faulders, founder of Faulders Studio, creates client-based projects at a wide array of building scales, exploratory architectural proposals, and speculative exhibitions. The office situates the practice of architecture as performative research that negotiates dynamic relationships between artificial and natural phenomena.
His work has been exhibited at La Triennale di Milano, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Lisbon International Biennale, and at Kunstlerhaus in Vienna, and is included in the Permanent Collection at the SFMOMA. He has received awards from the Architectural League of New York, Bienal Miami + Beach, American Institute of Architects, and the Society of Environmental Graphic Design. Faulders is also a recipient of the SFMOMA Experimental Design Award. He is an associate professor in architecture at CCA in San Francisco.
Peter Dixon
David Meckel
FAIA, director of research and planning, California College of the Arts, San Francisco
David Meckel, FAIA is the director of research and planning for the California College of the Arts (CCA), where he founded the architecture program. He also is the chair of SFMOMA’s Architecture and Design Accessions Committee and vice-chair of the nonprofit group Public Architecture.
Meckel began his career working for Charles and Ray Eames in Venice, CA. Currently, he contributes a regular column to arcCA magazine and is on the editorial advisory board of The Architects Newspaper. He is currently the professional advisor for an international design competition for ideas dealing with sea-level rise.
Michael Donovan
Clement Mok
designer, instigator, and consultant, CMCD Inc., San Francisco
A designer, digital pioneer, software publisher/developer, international author, and design patent holder, Clement Mok founded Studio Archetype, CMCD, and NetObjects. Since 1998 until recently, he was the chief creative officer of Sapient, during which tenure Sapient was named the top interactive agency by Forrester Research and Ad Age and also became the first service firm to be listed in the history of the S&P 500’s index.
Currently, he heads up a subscription-based royalty-free stock-image business — Visual Symbols — and consults on a variety of products and service development projects. Over his twenty-plus year career, he’s consulted for clients such as Adobe Systems Inc., American Express Co., Apple Inc., IBM Corp., Microsoft Inc., the Nagano Winter Olympic Committee, and many others. He has been involved with the launch of numerous new technologies and companies — including Apple’s Macintosh, Herman Miller’s Aeron chair, the Microsoft Network, interactive television, broadband applications, expert publishing systems, and major identity programs.
An advocate on design and technology practices, he’s been recognized by IDSA, NYArt Directors Club, AIGA, Broadcast Designers Association, American Center for Design, Type Directors Club, Communication Arts, ID, Graphis, Fast Company, Fortune, Business Week, and CEO magazine with major awards and citations. His designs have been exhibited in museums and galleries in Europe and Asia.
Graham Hanson
Debra Nichols
founder, Debra Nichols Design, San Francisco
Debra Nichols established Debra Nichols Design in April 1991 and has accumulated 25 years of experience encompassing design and coordination of architectural signage, environmental design, color palettes, and logo and print design. Prior to starting her own firm, she was the director of graphic design for 15 years at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, where she was an associate partner.
Nichols’ clients have included The San Francisco Giants; The Tech Museum in San Jose, CA; Hotel Mulia Senayan in Jakarta, Indonesia; Carmelray Town Development in Manila, the Philippines; 3Com Corp.; The Sears Tower Renovation in Chicago; One Market Plaza Renovation in San Francisco; and Wachovia Corp.
Nichols is the 1993 recipient of the University of California’s Award of Distinction. In 1998 she was inducted as a Fellow in the Society of Environmental Graphic Design. Other awards include citations from the American Institute of Architects, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Society for Environmental Graphic Design, Print magazine, and Communications Arts. Her work has been featured in professional publications such as Interiors, Identity, Interior Design, I.D. Magazine, Communication Arts, Architecture, Architectural Record, and Print Casebooks, and it has been exhibited at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum and Museum Smithsonian Institution in New York.
Duncan Jackson
Peter Stathis
founder, Virtual Studio, San Francisco
Peter Stathis is the founder of Virtual Studio, a collaborative industrial-design and strategic development-licensing venture founded in 1989. Projects encompass a wide range of electronic and consumer products, furniture, lighting, and accessories.
Alongside his professional practice, Peter has been teaching industrial design for more than two decades, most notably as the former director of the world-renowned graduate design program at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Stathis also has participated in numerous design exhibitions internationally, and his work is included in the permanent collections of major museums nationally including The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture & Design, The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Awards include the IDSA International Design Excellence Award, The Chicago Museum’s Good Design Award, inclusion in the I.D. Annual Design Review, as well as numerous ‘Best of Show’ awards from the International Contemporary Furniture Fair/ICFF held in New York — most recently in 2008 in conjunction with the lighting manufacturer Pablo for whom he designed the Link LED task lamp.