It is with much gratitude and admiration that we celebrate the jury alumni members of the Core77 Design Awards.
Roanne Adams is the Chief Creative Director and Founder of RoAndCo Studio. Established in 2006, RoAndCo serves as a visual thought leader for a range of forward-thinking fashion, beauty and lifestyle clients. Acting as both a strategic and creative resource for clients at every step of the branding experience, RoAndCo’s services include branding, art direction and interactive design.
Roanne’s fresh, iconic and forward approach has been recognized throughout the design community and has garnered such honors as PRINT magazine’s “New Visual Artist (20 under 30),” ADC Young Guns 9, as well as one of six of the city’s most “outstanding up-and-coming design professionals” named by T Magazine. A current member of AIGA/NY’s Board of Directors, Roanne lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.
Ryan Essmaker is an NYC-based creative director, designer, and photographer. He is a partner at the creative studio, Wayward Wild, and cofounder of The Great Discontent, a print and online magazine featuring timeless conversations with today’s artists, makers, and risk-takers. Launched as a digital-only magazine in 2011, TGD has grown to include film projects, events, and print. Prior to TGD, Ryan served as Creative Director and Head of Product at Crush & Lovely in NYC, and ran his own design and development studio in Michigan.
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.
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.