It is with much gratitude and admiration that we celebrate the jury alumni members of the Core77 Design Awards.
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Jury Alumni
Hrridaysh Deshpande
Director, DYPDC Center for Automotive Research and Studies
2016 Design Education Initiative Jury Member
Hrridaysh has been in the field of education for over 21 years. Presently, Hrridaysh is the member of Governing Body of Ajeenkya DY Patil University and is the Director of DYPDC School of Design and School of Film and Media.
He is associated with the India Design Council (IDC) as its consultant advisor. IDC is a national strategic body of Government of India established under the aegis of Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, Government of India. Under the aegis of IDC he is spearheading the India Design Mark program in cooperation with Good Design Award, Japan. He is the member of CII National Committee on Design. In 2004 he founded Creative-i College one of India’s first private initiatives in the field of Design Education.
Over the years Hrridaysh has acquired proficiency in business innovation strategy and design driven Innovation. He focuses on structured innovation practices for organizational innovation via appropriate tools, methods and processes. Hrridaysh has worked on several committees on innovation and has been a speaker at many prestigious forums. Through his work, Hrridaysh has assisted leading companies across a range of industries.
Hrridaysh is an experienced, enthusiastic, and energetic educator and innovation facilitator. He is passionately committed to education and capable of expanding the limits of traditional pedagogy through the development and realization of a unique integrative and interdisciplinary curriculum.
John Bielenberg
Partner, Future Partners
2016 Design for Social Impact Jury Member
John Bielenberg is a designer, entrepreneur, and imaginative advocate for creating a better world through the application of creativity and ingenuity. John co-founded Future Partners, a Silicon Valley Innovation firm, in 2012 to teach Rapid Ingenuity Practices to individuals, teams, and organizations around the world. In 2001, John co-founded C2 Group, a brand strategy firm, to help leaders from technology start ups, Fortune 500 companies, and the world’s top business management consulting firms develop, build and protect their brands. In his career, John has won more than 250 design awards, including the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) Gold Medal for lifetime achievement.
Hartmut Gaßner
Founding Partner, Gaßner, Groth, Siederer & Coll.
2016 Built Environment Jury Member
Hartmut Gaßner is a founding partner of Gaßner, Groth, Siederer & Coll. He focuses on renewable energy law (photovoltaic, geothermal, wind power projects), nuclear law, emissions trading, Stadtwerke, PPP procurement, recycling business, ministerial and municipal consulting, associations and policy advice. He studied law in Berlin, was a research associate of the Bundestag Greens (Otto Schily, Flick committee of inquiry), and had a traineeship in Berlin, admitted in 1987 before establishing GGSC.
Lotta Nieminen
Founder, Lotta Nieminen Studio
2016 Visual Communication Jury Member
Lotta Nieminen is an illustrator, graphic designer and art director from Helsinki, Finland. She has studied graphic design and illustration at the University of Art and Design Helsinki and the Rhode Island School of Design, and has worked as a freelancer in both fields since 2006 before starting her Brooklyn-based studio in 2012.
In 2014, she was nominated for Forbes magazine’s annual 30 Under 30 list in the Art & Style category. In 2010, she received the Art Directors Club Young Guns award and was selected by Print magazine for its annual New Visual Artists review, highlighting 20 international rising designers under the age of 30. Lotta has given talks around the US and Europe. Her client list includes companies such as Facebook, Hermès, Google, New York Times, Volkswagen, IBM, International Herald Tribune, Monocle, Newsweek, Wired, New York Magazine, Vanity Fair and Bloomberg Businessweek.
Srini Srinivasan
President and CEO, Lumium, LUMIUM Design, Inc.
2016 Design Education Initiative Jury Member
Srini Srinivasan is a highly accomplished entrepreneur in creative design and technology development, with over 20 years of work experience in the Silicon Valley, United States. As a highly networked and connected person, Srini has developed business successfully across the globe for the past two decades with F-500 companies. Srini has successfully raised capital from leading VCs in the Silicon Valley and enjoys being in Start-ups with his broad set of skills & global customer experience.
Srini is an avid global traveller and enjoys visiting various locations around the globe and meeting people. He loves to play golf and follows several major sports like Soccer, Golf, basketball & Cricket.
Mackey Saturday
Principal, Mackey Saturday
2016 Visual Communication Jury Captain
Responsible for some of today’s most ever-present identities-like those for Instagram, Oculus, and Affirm - Mackey has spent his career helping brands of all sizes become iconic through idea-driven strategy, elegantly simple design, and a relentless pursuit of enduring visual principles. After nearly a decade running his own studios in San Francisco and Denver, he became a Principal at Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv—the design firm responsible for classic logos including NBC, National Geographic, and Chase Bank. He now runs his namesake studio based in Brooklyn, focused on creating impactful visual identities across an array of industries both locally and internationally.
Jon Marshall
Director of Design, MAP
2016 Consumer Product Jury Captain
Jon Marshall is the Co-Founder and Design Director at Map, a London-based creative consultancy that specialises in strategy-led industrial design, packaging design and UX/UI. Map’s clients include some of the most innovative and well-known companies in the world such as Virgin Atlantic, Google, Yamaha and Panasonic alongside ambitious growth companies such as Kano, Sam Labs, and Sabi.
Most recently, Jon has worked with inventive start-up BeeLine on the design of an intuitive cycle navigation device. The device puts cyclists back in control of their journey, rather than being trapped in a turn by turn navigation system. BeeLine successfully launched on Kickstarter in November 2015 and received over £150,000 of funding, surpassing their goal of £60,000. Map is also working with an emerging talent on the design of an innovative cycle safety product.
Jon graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1996 with a Masters degree in Industrial Design and then worked at leading design firms Pentagram and Ross Lovegrove. He joined Barber & Osgerby as Studio Director in 2003 and developed some of the studio’s most iconic furniture and products such as the De La Warr Pavilion Chair, Tab Lamp and the 2012 Olympic Torch before co-founding MAP with Barber & Osgerby in 2012.
Bruce and Stephanie Tharp
Founders, Materious
2016 Speculative Concept Jury Captain
Bruce and Stephanie Tharp lead a husband-and-wife design studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan where they also are professors at the University of Michigan's Stamps School of Art & Design. Their studio has licensed and commissioned products and projects for companies like Ligne Roset, Moet-Hennessy, The Art Institute of Chicago, Crate&Barrel, Kikkerland, and Design Ideas. Educated in mechanical engineering, sociocultural anthropology, and industrial design, their practice and teaching crosses disciplinary boundaries of design, business, engineering, and healthcare, as well as the four fields of design: commercial, responsible, experimental, and discursive design. They are currently finishing a book project on discursive design.
Alex Alexiev
Automotive Designer, McLaren
2016 Transportation Jury Member
Alex is a designer at McLaren Automotive in the UK since 2013. His work at McLaren includes, production, advanced and bespoke customer projects through McLaren Special Operations.
Prior to joining McLaren he worked with a So-cal EV start-up to develop an electric platform for limited production in Newport Beach. He has worked in a variety of studios such as Polaris Industries, Volvo (VMCC), Toyota ADV Design (Tokyo), and Misha Design (LA) during his studies.
Alex is a Graduate with Honors (12’) of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, where most of the world’s top car designers are trained. Some of his work can be seen in the Petersen Automotive Museum, within the design process showcase. In addition to his professional activities, Alex is a outdoor fanatic, tennis player, and dedicated car enthusiast.
Arthur Huang
Co-Founder/CEO, MINIWIZ
2016 Built Environment Jury Captain
Arthur Huang is a structural engineer, architect and innovator of loop economy building material solutions. He founded Miniwiz in 2005 and has led the firm since.
Miniwiz is a global leader in post-consumer recycling technology with applications focused around built infrastructure and architectural solutions. For over 10 years, Miniwiz has been challenging the existing linear supply chain by using post-consumer recycled materials for high performance applications, retail store interiors, factory campuses and consumer goods.
Miniwiz gained recognition worldwide for first executing upcycling technologies and developing solutions that enable the switch to the circular economy. Three National Geographic Channel Episodes have been dedicated to Miniwiz , documenting the following Miniwiz Projects: The Ecoark Museum, the worlds first nine story tall museum made form post-consumer Materials (2010), Polliboat (2011), SDTI electronic waste recycling campus (2015). Miniwiz brought trash materials to the retail industry, equipping Nike’s high-end stores (Nikelab) with fixtures made from trash, in the heart of the world’s most premium cities: NYC, London, Paris, Milan, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo.
Among other honors, Miniwiz under Arthur Huang’s leadership won the Financial Times’ “Earth Award” in 2010 and The Wall Street Journal’s “Asian Innovation Award” in 2011. Miniwiz received the “Technology Pioneers 2015” title by the World Economic Forum, recognizing the potential of the new industry that Miniwiz is leading and the positive impact of its activities on the state of the world.
Miniwiz holds invention patents and trademarks for various mechanical and chemical up-cycling technologies, including Polliber™, a composite made of reprocessed organic waste with recycled polymers, Natrilon™, a yarn made of recycled PET reinforced with Nano SiO2 from rice husk, Pollibrick™, a mechanical interlocking system, and many others.
Jaime Moreno
Founder and Creative Director, Mormedi
2016 Commercial Equipment Jury Member
Born and raised in Madrid, Jaime started Architecture at the Polytechnic University of Madrid but shortly after moved to Switzerland where he achieved a Degree in Industrial Design at the Art Center College of Design. He has upgraded his studies taking seminars at Harvard, IESE, IE and St. Louis University Business School.
After graduating he worked as a design consultant for Philips at the Domestic Appliances department in The Netherlands.
From this experience, he decided to found in 1998 his own company, Mormedi, a design consultancy that innovates through customer experience, with a strategic approach, delivering service design, industrial design and digital experiences.
The company now includes a multidisciplinary and a highly skilled team of designers, strategists, engineers, business development consultants and marketing specialists. Mormedi covers many sectors in a wide variety of typologies, ranging from banking, airlines, telecommunications, consumer electronics, energy, etc. The 70% of its turnover comes from abroad, working for 12 companies that belong to the "Fortune 500” list.
Jaime combines his dedication to Mormedi, as CEO and Creative Director, with a passion for design which has led him to take part as a member of the jury in several competitions and to give conferences in Spain, UK, Denmark, Japan and Hong Kong. He is also a member of the Design Management Institute (DMI), the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), and the International Forum Design (IF).
Jaime has been awarded with the “2015 National Design Award” in the Professional’s Category, given by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.
Shashank Mehta
Activity Chairperson, National Institute of Design
2016 Design Education Initiative Jury Member
Shashank Mehta is a principal faculty of Industrial Design at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. Currently, he is the Activity Chairperson of the Institute’s Professional Education Programme.
Over the last five and half years, Shashank also served as the project head of the Design Clinic Scheme for MSMEs, a unique and ambitious design intervention scheme for the country’s large MSME sector. Supported by the Ministry of MSMEs, Government of India, the scheme reached out to over 200 MSME clusters through organization of Design Sensitization Seminars, Design Awareness Programmes and Design Projects.
Over the years Shashank has taught at the Undergraduate and Postgraduate levels, spanning various design disciplines. Shashank has spearheaded the introduction of new course modules 'Design Process', ‘Indigenous Innovations’, ‘Service Design’, ‘Design Audit’, and ‘Introduction to Experience Design’, that are in sync with the rapidly changing demands and aspirations of the industry and economy in general. He also anchored and conducted several workshops on these topics for the participants from various sectors of industries. In 2007, he developed the vision report and the curriculum for the four year undergraduate programme in Product Design. Shashank also developed curriculum for the Postgraduate Programme in Product Design Engineering.
Pradyumna Vyas
Director, National Institute of Design
2016 Design Education Initiative Jury Captain
Pradyumna Vyas acquired a Masters in Industrial Design from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. In June 2010, Vyas was conferred with an honorary Master of Arts degree from the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, United Kingdom in recognition of his contributions to design education and design promotion. Vyas has more than 30 years of professional and teaching experience in different spheres of design. Since the last 25 years, he has been associated with the National Institute of Design (NID) as a faculty in the Industrial Design discipline. In April 2009, he was appointed as the Director of the National Institute of Design.
Prior to joining NID, Vyas acquired three years overseas experience at the Kilkenny Design Centre, Republic of Ireland.
In July 2011, Vyas was given the award for his outstanding contribution to design education at the second edition of Asia’s Best B School Award that was held at Singapore. Vyas was invited as the jury member for the special awards screening panel at Good Design Award (G-Mark) by the Japan Institute of Design Promotion, Japan consequently in 2012, 2013 and 2014.He has been at the helm of design promotion events in India and has represented NID in various international and national events. He was elected as an ICSID (International Council of Societies of Industrial Design) Executive Board Member for 2009–11.
In pursuance of the National Design Policy approved by the Cabinet in February 2007, an India Design Council was constituted in March 2009 and Mr Vyas has been nominated as its Member Secretary by the Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India. In July 2015, World Education Congress, 2015 conferred the award for Outstanding Contribution to Education to Mr. Vyas.
Luca Nichetto
Founder, Nichetto Studio
2016 Furniture & Lighting Jury Captain
Luca Nichetto was born in 1976 in Venice. He studied at the city’s Istituto statale d’arte, before undertaking a degree in industrial design at the Università Iuav di Venezia, from which he graduated in 1998. In 1999, Nichetto began his professional career with Murano-based glass maker Salviati, later becoming a product designer and consultant for lighting company Foscarini. In 2006, he founded his eponymous practice in Venice. In 2011 he moved to Stockholm, Sweden, to open a second studio and he continues to live in and work from this city. Over the course of his career, Nichetto has served as art director for many international design brands and he has developed an in-depth knowledge of the design industry.
Kenya Hara
President, Nippon Design Center, Inc
2016 Service Design Jury Member
Born in 1958, designer, President of Nippon Design Center, Inc, and professor in Musashino Art University.
He attaches importance on “invisible” design as well as “visible” design and constantly broadens the horizon and scope in design.
Art Director of MUJI since 2002. Additionally, he has produced many exhibitions, such as “RE DESIGN”, “HAPTIC” and “SENSEWARE”, which focus on value renovation. His books, “Designing Design” and “White”, are translated into many different languages and gained great popularity in many countries.
Alex Rainert
VP of Product, Nucleus
2016 Interaction Jury Member
I've got 17 years of experience building teams and shipping products in wildly different creative and business environments - startups (co-founder @dodgeball, head of product @Foursquare), large tech companies (Google), digital agencies (R/GA, Razorfish) and an amazing tech-meets-art graduate program (NYU’s ITP).
I'm currently leading Product at a NYC-based hardware + software company called Nucleus. We're building a smart intercom that will serve as the foundation for people to communicate seamlessly with the ones they care about the most — whether they’re in another room in the same house, in a completely different location (Hi mom!) or on the move on their mobile devices.
You can learn more about the product at www.nucleuslife.com. I'm building up the product team so if you have any interest in designing an experience that will live at the center of families' lives, get in touch and let me know what excites you about it.