It is with much gratitude and admiration that we celebrate the jury alumni members of the Core77 Design Awards.
Brian Gaffney is a seasoned workflow specialist working alongside media and entertainment companies over the last 25 years, including Technicolor, PIX System, CODEX, Turbo Squid, and Autodesk in support of Visual Effects, Games Development, Content Management and real-time 3D virtual production. Brian is a creative technologist who assists artists and engineers in realizing their creative visions and currently works at Unity 3D with the Professional Artistry team.
Jeff has over 35 years of experience in editorial, color correction, VFX, virtual, and augmented reality. He has worked on over 100 films and numerous award-winning productions including: Titanic, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Fifth Element, Avengers, Spiderman, Harry Potter, and Armageddon.
Jeff has worked as part of the creative, production, and post-production teams for numerous companies including Disney, Dreamworks Animation, Marvel, Sony, Warner Bros., Digital Domain, Universal, and New Line. Jeff has also worked on virtual reality projects for the NFL, NBA, and MLB. He is an expert at creating workflows for media projects.
Jeff also worked for Autodesk and was part of Flame, Smoke, and Lustre product launches. He has lectured for universities all over the world speaking about post-production and virtual reality.
Beau is a 30+ year 3D animation industry veteran and respected management professional with a long track record of delivering high-quality tools, services, and support on his partners' behalf. He's developed and maintained deep relationships with all of the major players in the 3D arena including NVIDIA, Amazon, Autodesk, Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, Maxon, Epic Games, and Unity just to name a few, and has been deeply involved in helping bring standards to 3D over the past 20 years as part of TurboSquid, which was acquired by Shutterstock in 2021. He was instrumental in the development of both the CheckMate 3D modeling standard and StemCell initiatives to help train artists on how to create visual content in a more consistent and professional manner so it could be utilized in multiple projects easily. In his role at NVIDIA, he is building a new 3D content creation standard called SimReady to help ensure that 3D art assets can be utilized across a wide range of machine learning, AI and simulation platforms in a consistent and predictable manner.
An early adopter of digital content creation, John was at the forefront of technology in the late 1980s and 1990s. Utilizing platforms such as Quantel Paintbox and Kodak Cineon for high-end image manipulation, and soon embraced Discreet Logic’s (now Autodesk) Flame and Inferno systems.
John found a home at the CGI pioneer Blue Sky Studios. Starting there with just a small handful of wildly creative thinkers and stayed on for twenty-six years until the studio’s closure in April of 2021.
With close to 40 credits over the years, mostly in animated feature films, John has contributed to many of the family favorites that have entertained millions. He currently continues this path as a lighting and compositing artist at Skydance Animation.
Always with an eye toward the future, he feels it’s essential to remain informed about emerging technologies and how they’ll affect and influence what we’re exposed to, and how we chose to access them.
Born and raised in Long Beach, California, Jaye studied Sustainable Engineering at Stanford and currently works at Emeco in Product Development and Sustainability, where she chairs out of recycled materials. She lives and surfs in Venice Beach, California.
Iñigo Ysasi is a co-founder at Casa Ysasi; a Los Angeles-based creative studio with an emphasis on light.
Iñigo self-taught designer constantly experimenting with new mediums from wood to neon all the way to concrete. He is driven by curiosity and the combination of nontraditional materials in new formats. He moved to LA back in 2016 to join a large technology company while simultaneously pursuing a creative profession in his free time. He worked for a furniture company before co-founding Casa Ysasi with his brother Patricio Ysasi in 2020.
Patricio “Pato” Ysasi is a co-founder at Casa Ysasi; a Los Angeles-based creative studio with an emphasis on light. Patricio is a Los Angeles-based art director and filmmaker whose work explores the intersection of photography, film, and text. Since graduating from Cornell University, Patricio has worked in collaboration with Farm League, MACRO, and Tortoise.
As Product Development Design Director for Gensler, Daniel applies his insights and industry experience to inspire design teams to translate Gensler’s voice and vision into tangible products for workplace and lifestyle environments. Partnering with manufacturers, his team creates touchpoints that expand the experience for which clients rely upon Gensler. He previously led design teams on projects with Arper, Andreu World, Devon&Devon, Elizabeth Arden, Emser, Estel, Fantoni, Gandia Blasco, Knoll, Muraflex, OXO, Targetti, Zumtobel, and many others.
Daniel’s career began with digital imaging pioneer April Greiman, focusing on brand-based design and conceptual work. From there, he worked with legendary product designers Richard Holbrook and Don Chadwick until eventually striking out on his own. Daniel joined Gensler in 2014.
With over 12 years of experience in industrial design, Vincent is focused on bringing to life products that sit at the nexus of engineering and art, combining both elegant form and supreme functionality. He now leads all design at Secretlab, heading the development of the award-winning Secretlab TITAN Evo, MAGNUS desks, monitor arms, and more.
Looking to the future for inspiration, he believes in constantly pushing the boundaries of design and engineering for Secretlab’s next generation of products. Today, Secretlab is at the vanguard of fast and evolving design trends in the gaming industry, leading the way with a relentless focus on improving performance through thoughtful design."
Nik has a wealth of experience across corporate design teams at Philips Design, Microsoft, and HP, as well as growing several design-focused startups.
Notably, he was part of the founding team at Razer, leading the design group to develop the design language and product portfolio. As well as growing the Razer brand, his design work has heavily influenced the gaming industry as a whole.
Nik now specializes in computational design for 3D printing. He will be especially interested to see similar, new technology and innovation in the applicants this year.
Creative professional with international experience in product innovation, strategic product design and development.
A veteran industrial designer, Li Qing has over 15 years of experience in product development, spanning design research to concept development and production. She has honed her expertise in varied industries, from consumer electronics to medical equipment.
She spent the past 8 years working at ASUS Design Center in Singapore, probing the future and exploring next-generation computing and gaming experiences. Li Qing’s work centers around the ROG Gaming series, where she is focused on bringing innovative ideas and unexpected design solutions to the table to develop new creative visions that chart the path forward for her team.
An Industrial Designer based in Singapore, Alvin has over 18 years of experience crafting designs with small to multinational companies. His adaptability over the years has enabled his design experience to span across different and diverse design disciplines from industrial, packaging, and brand to CMF, producing multi-award-winning designs.
When he was a brand consultant, he successfully helped rebrand, strategize, and improve brand equity for various companies in different industries. Prior to joining Bang & Olufsen, Alvin worked with other companies such as Philips and has collaborated with various automotive and lifestyle brands such as Aston Martin, Sony, and Balenciaga.
He continuously strives to stimulate creative thinking, with unique and strategic ideas and solutions, applying them to his work to create inspiring and human-centric designs, focusing on emotive and experiential touch points.
Morgan Hutchinson, MD is the Assistant Medical Director of the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital Emergency Department, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine and Director of Education for the Jefferson Health Design Lab where she directs the first curricular design thinking program in a US medical school. She is a creator, educator, international speaker, clinical leader and advisor working at the intersection of human-centered design, medical education and clinical quality improvement. Her work has been highlighted by the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Business Journal, Pennsylvania Medical Society and others.
Morgan is passionate about applying human-centered design to reimagining healthcare. Morgan’s created Jefferson’s COVID-19 Mobile Unit to increase access to testing and vaccines in Philadelphia’s vulnerable communities, and has advised on multiple mobile health programs focusing on primary care, women's health and cancer prevention. She has led multiple initiatives to expand clinical spaces to boost surge capacity; leverage 3D-print technology to meet supply chain shortages, and reimagine healthcare services. She has advised and partnered with diverse teams across industries to find creative, collaborative solutions to challenges in service design, health equity and medical education.
Robert S. Pugliese is Director of Innovation Design at Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health where he co-founded the Health Design Lab, a creative space built to merge design-studio ethos with science-oriented discipline to foster innovation in healthcare. As somebody who enjoys empowering people to be change-makers in healthcare, Rob leads programs that train learners to be health design thinkers and innovators. A Doctor of Pharmacy, Rob spent over ten years practicing and teaching Emergency Medicine. He believes that including both the patient and provider voice is vital to healthcare design. He brings these perspectives to his work through his experiences as a clinician and as a person/cyborg who relies on technology to manage his insulin-dependent diabetes. Rob has presented on the intersection of healthcare and design at national venues such as SXSW and Stanford MedX. During the pandemic, Rob has used his unique experience to lead public health response efforts in response to community needs for testing and vaccination. In his spare time, Rob produces a weekly podcast and enjoys spending time with his wife and three daughters.
Jen Horonjeff, Ph.D., is a patient advocate and the Founder & CEO of Savvy Cooperative. She was named one of the 50 Most Daring Entrepreneurs by Entrepreneur Magazine, alongside Elon Musk and Reese Witherspoon, for her work at Savvy, which helps companies equitably gather input and insights from diverse patients. Jen is passionate about patient co-design as she grew up with juvenile idiopathic arthritis and survived a brain tumor as an adult. She also holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Medicine and previously worked as a health outcomes researcher, human factors engineer, and user-centered designer, and an advisor to the FDA. Jen serves on the Board of Directors for The Sequoia Project, a non-profit focused on health data exchange, the Advisory Board of Trialbee, a clinical trial recruitment company, and numerous other committees to ensure the patient voice is included.