People

Invited designers who will lead the workshops and talk at the conference include:

Daniel Eatock
‘Using my background knowledge from working as a graphic designer, I employ a rational, logical and pragmatic approach when making work. I have an ongoing interest to proposing and finding solutions to problems, often problems that cannot be formulated before they have been solved, the shaping of the question is part of the answer. I look for things to fix or improve, working like a tinkerer/inventor, I propose alternatives to existing models, preferring to find ways around doing things properly, bypassing the struggle. I use self referentiality as an objective guide to reduce the extraneous and subjective, and strive for a conceptual logic. The idea is paramount and the material form secondary. My website is a tool where I both create works, and index and exhibit projects chronologically. I propose systems, templates, invitations and opportunities for collaboration, creating social networks where contributers shape the outcome and participate in the building of works. I embrace contradictions, and dilemmas. I like gray areas, oxymorons and the feeling of falling backwards. My favorite colour is the purple found in a soap bubble. I prefer to swap and exchange things rather than use money. I seek alignments, paradoxes, chance circumstance, loops, impossibilities and wit encountered in everyday life. I often change my mind, go full circle, and arrive at the beginning.’
http://eatock.com

Flávia Müller Medeiros
Flávia Müller Medeiros was born in 1971 in Rio de Janeiro. She currently lives and works in London. Flávia studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College (2002-2004), and was in Beck’s Futures, ICA, London, 2006. Her work featured in Art is Always Somewhere Else, 2nd International Biennial of Young Artists, Bucharest, Romania, October, 2006; Footnotes about Geopolitics, Markets and Amnesia, 2nd Moscow Biennale for Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2007; The reader must not expect to know where I live, Master Humphrey’s Clock, de Appel, Amsterdam, 2008; and in Tate Triennial, Prologue 2: Exiles, Tate Britain, London, 2008.
Flávia uses performance, photography and video in her work, to explore how language shapes understanding, and its relationship to artistic representation. Her works are not closed, but often create systems within which other works can be contained. An example is a book and solo exhibition It depends on the circumstance and the people (2005) in which she worked with artists and curators to catalogue all her work from between 1999 and 2004, reflecting how systems can develop into artworks in their own right.
Flávia’s work is often based on interactions. You are beautiful (2003-ongoing) are cards that she gives out to people on the streets. Temporary Studio at the ICA (2005) – I.D.E.A.London – aimed to create an artwork a day, arising from any interaction, conflict or negotiation between the artist and staff or visitors. Another work on video, Inaugurate (2005), combines language and image to create fresh readings of a sequence from Easy Rider by superimposing a rapidly-spoken clip of George Bush’s inaugural speech.
flaviamullermedeiros.com

Formafantasma
Andrea Trimarchi (1983) and Simone Farresin (1980) are Studio Formafantasma – two Italian designers based in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
The collaboration between the two started during their BA in communication design, illustrating books and magazines. Their interest in product design developed on the IM masters course at Design Academy Eindhoven, where they graduated in July 2009 with a thesis based on traditional Sicilian folk craft. Formafantasma’s work explores such issues as the role of design in folk craft, the relationship between tradition and local culture, critical approaches to sustainability and the significance of objects as cultural conduits.
They identify their role as the bridge between craft, industry, object and user and seek to stimulate a more critical and conceptual design dialogue through their work. Works of Studio Formafantasma has been shown during the Milan and the Dutch Design Week, Abu Dhabi Art, during the ICFF in New York, Design Miami\Basel, the prestigious auction house Sotheby’s in London and other international design fairs and exhibition.
Formafantasma’s works are part of the collection of: Droog Design, Rossana Orlandi Gallery in Milan, Moss gallery NY, Nodus Rugs, Dilmos Gallery, Libby Sellers Gallery, Textile Museum in Tilburg, The Art Institute of Chicago, Fendi and Vitra Design Museum.
In march 2011 Studio Formafantasma has been nominated by Alice Rawsthorn, design critic of the International Herald Tribune and New York Times and Paola Antonelli, design curator of the MOMA in NY, as the 1 of the 20 most promising young design studio.
The studio has been among the finalists of the Index Award 2011, Brith Insurance Designs of the Year 2012, and IMM Young Design Award 2011.
www.formafantasma.com

Rob Giampietro (Project Projects)
Rob Giampietro is a designer, writer, and teacher. As principal at Project Projects, he leads interactive and identity projects for clients in art, architecture, and the cultural sector. The studio was a finalist for the National Design Awards in 2009 & 2011.
As a writer, Rob’s work has touched on a range of topics including the history of visual identity and branding in the arts, the uses of metaphor in interaction design, and the form of the library in the digital age. His essays have appeared in Dot Dot Dot, Design Observer, Eye, Print, and BusinessWeek. His design commentary has been featured in The New York Times, New York Magazine, and on NPR. As vice president of AIGA/NY in 2008, he organized programming that included a historic conversation between Wim Crouwel and Massimo Vignelli and a free series of talks by emerging designers at the Soho Apple Store. His most recent essay on the rise of Graphic Design MFA programs, “School Days,” was published in the Walker Art Center’s Graphic Design: Now in Production catalogue in 2011.
Rob has lectured and taught widely at institutions including Artists Space, Columbia GSAPP, the New Museum, Parsons / The New School, the School of Visual Arts, and Yale School of Art. Since 2006, he has been a graduate thesis advisor at RISD.
www.linedandunlined.com
projectprojects.com

Cynthia Hathaway
Born in Canada, educated and living in Holland, Cynthia Hathaway is a freelance designer, consultant and educator with a versatile portfolio. Her work ranges from the design of perfume bottles, books, clocks, wallpaper and porcelain souvenir sets. Her specialty is the research of peripheral groups around the world to translate independent living practices into design methodologies and applications. This work has taken Hathaway around the world from the Inuit of the Arctic in Canada, the Mennonites and Amish of Ontario, to giant vegetable growers and train hobbyists in Europe. Her products are seen in the collections of Droog and DroogLab, the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, Platform21, and MotherBrand.
She served from 2002–2007 as the Art Director of the prestigious FunLab Masters program at the Design Academy Eindhoven focusing on Designs of Experience. Presently she teaches at the DesignLab Rietveld and Sandberg Master Academies in Amsterdam. She has worked as a consultant and designer for a rooster of advertizing and communication companies such as KesselsKramer, Organic Inc., and Wieden and Kennedy.
Most recently she has been a designer for the 4th Annual Utrecht Manifest with designs called Car Wash Mekka for the theme Working Landscape directed by Jurgen Bey and cuarted by Sophie Krier.
www.hathawaydesigns.org

Sophie Krier
Atelier Sophie Krier (Lux/B) is based in Rotterdam (NL) and explores the peripheries of the design field in editorial and socially driven projects. Sophie Krier recently curated a series of symposia on education, craft, and visual culture. She conducts ongoing research on design processes through the self-initiated journal Field Essays (published by Onomatopee.net), which is an attempt at developing a visual grammar of research. Between 2004 and 2009, Krier led the Bachelor course designLAB (Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam). She lectures and conducts international workshops on a regular basis. Among Sophie Krier’s clients are museums and art institutions (MUDAM, MOTI, Boijmans van Beuningen, Witte de With, Axis, TENT, CBK, CBKU, Vanabbe Museum), municipalities and governmental organisations (Premsela, Dutch Ambassy) and educational institutes (Otis, Cranbrook, Centro, IED, HvA, Sandberg Institute). Current topics of study include ‘the working landscape’ for Utrecht Manifest NO.4, Biennale of Social Design, ‘reskilling the city’ for design research station DRS22, and a year long activities programme for a former rural site, soon to become recreational nature. In short, Atelier Sophie Krier initiates and develops tools for collective narration and reflection.
www.sophiekrier.com

Metahaven
Metahaven is an Amsterdam-based research and design outfit on the cutting blade between politics and aesthetics. Founded by Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden, Metahaven’s work—both commissioned and self-directed—reflects political and social issues in provocative graphic design objects. Research projects included the Sealand Identity Project, and currently include Facestate, and Iceland as Method. Solo exhibitions include Affiche Frontière (CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, 2008) and Stadtstaat (Künstlerhaus Stuttgart/Casco, 2009). Group exhibitions include Forms of Inquiry (AA London, 2007, cat.), Manifesta8 (Murcia, 2010, cat.), the Gwangju Design Biennale 2011 (Gwangju, Korea, cat.), Graphic Design: Now In Production (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2011, and Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York, 2012, cat.) and The New Public (Museion, Bolzano, cat.). Metahaven’s work was published and discussed in The International Herald Tribune, Huffington Post, Courrier International, Icon, Domus, Dazed, The Verge, l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, and Mute, among other publications. Vinca Kruk is a Tutor of Editorial Design and Design Critique at ArtEZ Academy of Arts in Arhem. Daniel van der Velden is a Senior Critic at Yale University, and a Tutor of Design at the Sandberg Institute Amsterdam. In 2010, Metahaven released Uncorporate Identity, a design anthology for our dystopian age, published by Lars Müller. Metahaven was named one out of 20 of the most promising design studios by Rolling Stone Italia in 2011, and their research project on the branding of the controversial whistleblowing website WikiLeaks was a Finalist for the 2012 Dutch Design Awards.
metahaven.net

mischer’traxler
Studio mischer’traxler was founded by Katharina Mischer (1982) and Thomas Traxler (1981) in 2009 after graduating from the IM-masters of the Design Academy Eindhoven and several years of collaboration. Based in Vienna they develop and design products, furniture, installations and more, with a focus on experiments, context and conceptual thinking. Balancing between hand craft and technology, their projects are often characterized by external inputs, for example, locality, weather conditions, human interaction or the usage of the existing.
Exhibitions on contemporary Design displayed their projects in Museums including the Boijmans van Boiningen Rotterdam, the Design Museum London and the Triennale Milano, as well as on International Festivals. Their designs can be found in the permanent collections of the Art Institute Chicago and the MAK Vienna. In 2011 studio mischer’traxler was honoured with the ‘W-hotels designer of the future award’ by Design Miami/Basel.
www.mischertraxler.com