It is with much gratitude and admiration that we celebrate the jury alumni members of the Core77 Design Awards.
Petrula Vrontikis is a leading influence in graphic design. Her current work includes research, writing, consulting, creating brand communication strategies, training, and coaching. She received an AIGA Fellows Award honoring her as an essential voice raising the understanding of design within the industry and among the business and cultural communities. She served as a national advisory board member of the AIGA and is frequently asked to serve on numerous local, national, and international design juries.
She is creative director and owner of Vrontikis Design Office (@vrontikis and 35k.com) and a professor at Art Center College of Design, teaching graphic design, career development, and professional practice courses.
Her professional practice gives her role as a teacher an important authenticity. She encourages students to explore their potential as designers and as a catalyst for change in the larger creative community.
Petrula is an avid traveler and visual translator. It’s not unusual to find her scuba diving with giant manta rays, climbing a steep and rocky slope, or twisting her body like a pretzel in a yoga class.
Roshi Givechi is a Partner and Executive Design Director at IDEO, a global design consulting firm. Having called many of IDEO's US and Asia offices home, Roshi channels her global exposure to amplify creativity and culture – cultivating opportunities for designers, clients, and an extended creative network to inspire and challenge each other in service of making a difference in the world. This exposure also means she spots patterns and edges across region as well as industry, enabling her to help shape good design. As a designer inspired by choreography, Roshi loves dissecting the many parts that come together to make a greater whole—whether designing for cities, products, services, or shaping stories themselves. Her years at IDEO have given her an intimate view of the changing nature of design’s role, and what it means to envision and define products and systems that bring disproportionate impact to the world. Roshi’s clients include Anheuser-Busch InBev, Bank of America, the Kaufman Foundation, Medtronic, NASA, Nokia, Ritz-Carlton, Steelcase, Timberland, and YouTube.
In her role at IDEO, Roshi regularly teaches design thinking through facilitated innovation workshops within organizations. She has also taught cross-disciplinary design at the California College of Arts and, most recently, Human Values in Design at Stanford In New York. She is a frequent collaborator of the Sundance Institute Theater Program, helping to host public conversations on topics that inform our daily lives through a forum coined Creative Tensions (creativetensions.com). Roshi holds an MFA from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, a BS from University of California, Davis, and in January 2009, was profiled in I.D Magazine’s “I.D. 40” list as one of 40 leading design innovators. She’s keen to figure out what to show for it in 2049...
Phil Hamlett is the Director of the School of Graphic Design at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, the largest private art and design school in the country. In this setting, he teaches classes, develops curriculum, recruits and manages instructors, advises students, manages the graduate thesis development process, conducts outreach and establishes the strategic agenda for the School. His students emerge as advanced design practitioners and go on to acquire positions at leading firms around the world. Phil joined the Academy in 2004 and served for thirteen years as the Graduate Director for the School of Graphic Design, building the nascent MFA program from scratch.
Prior to becoming a design educator, Phil led design studios on both coasts, creating award-winning work for clients large and small. His extensive professional experience provides him with the perspective necessary to prepare students for the challenges of the real world. Capable of playing a wide variety of design, communication and managerial roles, he is adept at identifying creative challenges, distilling core objectives, formulating a plan of attack, and managing the team that will then fix everything.
Phil recently completed his term as president of the AIGA San Francisco chapter, for which he continues to serve ex officio. He is also a former AIGA national board member, founder of Compostmodern and co-author of the Living Principles for Design — the means by which he guides the development of sustainable business practice within the design community As a charter member of the Winterhouse Institute Founder’s Circle, he helps articulate the value of design education for social impact.
In his off time, he can usually be found chasing around his two adorable children (photos available upon request).
Jeremy Mende is a visual artist and designer from San Francisco, California. In 2000 he founded MendeDesign, a creative practice that balances commercial projects with strategic design work for socially oriented non-profits. The studio has been recognized internationally for its work and currently has pieces in several collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Jeremy is a professor of design at California College of the Arts.