Jury Alumni

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  Nootan Bharani

  Associate Director, Design & University Partnerships, Arts + Public Life

  2023 Built Environment Jury Member

  Nootan Bharani is a fierce champion of the continuum of communities and a thoughtful leader of processes to shape places where people want to be. An architect with a deep background in environmental sustainability, Nootan has a propensity toward existing buildings and in-between spaces, and has spent most of her career in non-traditional practice, working directly with neighborhood partners on projects at a wide variety of scales. Nootan is currently the Associate Director of Design and University Partnerships at Arts + Public Life, and a lecturer in the Humanities Division, at the University of Chicago. Previously, Nootan was Lead Design Manager for Place Lab at the University of Chicago where she was thought and practice leader for building projects. Prior to coming to the University of Chicago, she was Managing Director for CB&I Sustainable Design Solutions of Illinois. Nootan is also a volunteer in Chicago Public Schools where her children attend, co-leading initiatives for caregivers of students with disabilities.

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  Reid Schlegel

  Associate Design Director, Aruliden

  2022 Personal Accessory Jury Member

  Reid Schlegel is a NYC based Industrial Designer with a solid history working in the design consulting and education space. He is currently an Associate Design Director at Aruliden and previously worked at frog and SMART Design. As a design educator Reid teaches process drawing + digital visualization and Junior Year Studio at the Parsons School of Design and visits Universities to guest lecture and teach his design process methodologies. Additionally, Reid runs an Instagram account with 136k+ followers showcasing his work and other design related content.

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  Malina Dabrowska

  Foresight Design lead, Arup

  2024 Speculative Design Jury Member

  Malina is a multidisciplinary Design Lead in Arup’s Foresight team. They design experiences and strategies that reimagine our relationship with the built environment.

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  Joy Young

  Creative Director, Astro Studios

  2022 Home & Living Jury Member

  Joy is a Creative Director at Astro Studios, a brand and industrial design studio based in San Francisco. As a designer, she focuses on crafting compelling stories and experiences that are tailored for brands and people. She works with the team at Astro Studios to build products that bring meaningful and positive experiences to everyday life. Spending much of her upbringing in both Taiwan and New Zealand has given Joy a unique cultural background from which to draw inspiration. Joy has over 14 years of professional experience as an Industrial Designer working in agencies in Asia, Europe and North America. She has worked on a diverse range of categories ranging from homeware, furniture, consumer electronics, health & wellness and medical.

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  David Whetstone

  Design Director, Astro Studios

  2015 Consumer Product Jury Member

  David Whetstone is an industrial designer in San Francisco, CA, but his creativity comes from the basketball courts of Northeast Ohio where he discovered athletic sneakers and self expression on the court. He remembers observing the best players and taking particular interest in how they presented themselves through clothing, posture and speech. He trained himself to observe the details, understand what people really want and why those things fit with their particularly crafted lifestyle.This ability to connect with culture has stayed with him, and he has carefully crafted his industrial design career to design products that people wear and use as expression of self. His unique position as an industrial designer with passion to create fashion relevant pieces has allowed him to work with leading lifestyle brands like Nixon, Electric Visual, Nike, Incase, and The Art of Shaving. His work has been available to buy at big department stores like Nordstrom and Barneys New York to premier boutiques like Opening Ceremony and Colette.David Whetstone is currently a Design Director at Astro Studios in San Francisco, CA.

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  Norio Fujikawa

  Creative Director, Astro Studios, Inc.

  2017 Transportation Jury Member

  Norio Fujikawa is an award winning industrial designer currently working as a Creative Director at Astro Studios in San Francisco, where he has designed products for many of the world’s leading companies. Microsoft, Intel, HP, P&G, Samsung, Disney, Nike, and Nissan have all benefitted from Norio’s keen eye for innovative design. He has worked across a wide range of businesses and industries that include consumer electronics, home goods, appliances, toys, equipment, and automotive. Norio has also mentored start-ups with his 20 years plus of knowledge in developing products, brands, and experiences.
  
  
  Born and raised in Chicago, Norio studied at the Institute of Design. At the heart of it all, Norio is an artist. When he isn’t designing, he is either professionally illustrating or hanging his paintings in better art galleries around San Francisco. Norio has also been a semi-professional tumbler, and is a fully-professional fish monger.

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  Li Qing

  Senior Industrial Design Manager, ASUS Singapore

  2023 Gaming Accessories Jury Member

  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.
  

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  Aric Cheston

  Assistant Vice President of Design, AT&T

  2020 Interaction Jury Member

  Aric Cheston is a product and service designer living and working in Austin Texas. He is currently the Assistant Vice President of Design at AT&T where he leads a multidisciplinary team focused on large scale transformational projects encompassing all aspects of the business. Previous to AT&T, Aric co-founded the experience design firm, Big Tomorrow, served as Executive Creative Director of Frog Design, and was a partner in the storied brand advertising and marketing firm Kirshenbaum Bond Partners. He has worked with clients across industries, most notably, BMW, HP, Disney, Comcast, and The University of Texas.
  
  Aric holds an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design.

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  Mariano Flore

  Senior Graphic Designer, Atipus Barcelona

  2017 Visual Communication Jury Member

  Mariano Fiore is an Argentinian Graphic Designer based in Barcelona specializing in corporate identity, editorial design and packaging.
  
  He believes in a conceptual work and a simple and direct visual language. In 2009 Mariano got his degree in Graphic Design from the ESD of Murcia. He has 6 years of graphic design experience working in studios from Bolzano (Italy), Murcia and Barcelona (Spain).
  
  In the last years Marino has worked developing projects for national and international clients.
  
  He is currently working at Atipus Barcelona as a senior graphic designer.

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  Gregory Jewett

  Co-founder, ATIQ

  2018 Packaging Jury Member

  Gregory Jewett is a co-founder of ATIQ, a retail shop based in Saigon specializing in art and design objects. ATIQ stocks a curated range of products including craft objects, prints, furniture and home decor collected from various countries around Asia. ATIQ also displays a collection of artwork from a selection of Vietnamese artists.

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  Nicholas Fulcher

  Art Director & Designer, Atlantic Records

  2023 Visual Communication Jury Member

  NickyChulo (Nicholas Fulcher) is an Art Director & Designer from Northern Virginia who currently resides in Los Angeles, California. Learning how to draw at an early age, Nicholas was drawn to graffiti, comic books, and video games. He continued to harness his combined love of art & design and attended numerous design classes in high school. Teachers quickly began to take notice and started to encourage his growth which helped cultivate his passion for visual communication. In 2010, Nicholas began freelancing in Washington D.C. and his primary focus was album art and apparel design. From 2013-2014 he attended Savannah College of Art & Design (Atlanta) studying towards his BFA in Graphic Design. After studying a few years, honing his craft, Nicholas made the move to New York City where he actualized his passion by becoming an Art Director at Atlantic records. He has carefully navigated his way through the industry and has grown into one of the most sought out visual artists.

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  Astrid Stavro

  Partner & Creative Director, Atlas

  2015 Visual Communication Jury Captain

  Astrid Stavro graduated with a First Class Certificate from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design and with Distinction from The Royal College of Art in London. In 2004 she returned to her native land of Spain to start her own design practice in Barcelona. Astrid Stavro's strongly rooted conceptual solutions and distinctive typographic approach quickly won international critical acclaim. Her work has been recognized nationally and internationally with over 150 highly acclaimed creative awards including D&AD, The Annual (Creative Review), Design Week Awards, The International Society of Typographic Designers and Art Directors Club of New York. She is a recurrent jury member in design competitions and lectures in design conferences worldwide. Stavro writes for various design journals and is currently the Art Director as well as a contributing editor of Elephant magazine.

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  Hlynur V. Atlason

  Founder, ATLASON

  2020 Furniture & Lighting Jury Member

  Hlynur V. Atlason, leads his eponymous design studio ATLASON, based in Manhattan. Leading a team of world-class strategists, innovators and designers, practicing a method of design, deeply informed by research, brand and craft. ATLASON delivers strategy, design innovation and manufacturing expertise, guaranteeing everything imagined, can be made.
  
  ATLASON/studio, his own product design firm founded in 2004, has since built a comprehensive portfolio of furniture, consumer lifestyle products and packaging in collaboration with MoMA, DWR, Ercol, Umbra, Artecnica, Estée Lauder, Microsoft, and Stella Artois.
  
  Hlynur is an adjunct lecturer at School of Visual Arts, Products of Design Masters Degree Program, NYC.

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  Davide Mosconi

  Creative Partner, Auge Design

  2024 Packaging Jury Captain

  Davide Mosconi (born in 1981) is an Italian Designer and Art Director with over 20 years of experience in the field of communication and design. After spending 7 years at McCann-Erickson as an Art Director working on international brands, in 2011, he shifted his focus to branding and design. He became a co- founder and Creative Director of Apart Collective, working on projects for international museum institutions and prominent fashion brands. Starting in September 2016, he has held the role of Co-Founder and Creative Partner at Auge Design, an acclaimed Italian design agency specializing in packaging and branding, with offices in Milan and Florence. In just a few years, Davide has made a significant contribution to elevating Auge Design's status as the most globally recognized Italian packaging design agency, achieving notable awards including Cannes Lions, Clio Awards, D&AD, ADCE, Dieline, Pentawards and has represented Italian creativity on various international design juries.

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  James Auger

  Partner, Auger-Loizeau

  2015 Speculative Concept Jury Member

  James Auger is a designer, researcher and lecturer whose work examines the social, cultural and human impact of technology and the products that exist as a result of its development and application. On graduating from Design Products (MA) at the Royal College of Art in 2001 James moved to Dublin to conduct research at Media Lab Europe (MLE) exploring the theme of human communication as mediated by technology. After MLE he worked in Tokyo as guest designer at the Miyake Design Studio developing new concepts for mobile telephones.In 2005 he returned to the RCA to teach on the Design Interactions program. During his time in DI he has been a Philips research fellow exploring the human experiential potential of smell as part of their probes program (2006-2007) and more recently completed a Ph.D (December 2012). The thesis questions the process through with emerging technologies enter everyday life using the robot as a focus for the study. James is a visiting professor at both the Haute +cole d'Art et de Design in Geneva and Musashino Art University in Tokyo. He is a partner in the speculative design practice Auger-Loizeau whose projects have been published and exhibited internationally, including MoMA, New York; 21_21, Tokyo; The Science Museum, London and Ars Electronica, Linz. Their work is in the permanent collection at MoMA. Before moving into the field of design James completed an Engineering apprenticeship at Rolls-Royce, Derby (aero engines) and worked for several years as a model-maker and special effects technician in the film industry.

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  Maria Guidice

  VP of Experience Design, Autodesk

  2016 Design for Social Impact Jury Member

  Innovator, artist, protagonist, and positive provocateur, Maria has pursued a vision of intelligent, elegant, people-centered design throughout her professional life. Her grasp of the pragmatic, the authentic, and the essential have kept her at the forefront of design and business for over 25 years.
  
  Under Maria’s leadership, Hot Studio, the experience design firm she founded in 1997, grew into a full-service creative agency with an impressive list of Fortune 500 clients. In March 2013, Facebook acquired the talent behind Hot Studio. In 2015, she joined Autodesk as VP, Experience Design. Her latest book, Rise of the DEO: Leadership by Design, is published by New Riders. Maria is an AIGA Design Fellow. She has spoken at conferences all over the world and currently serves as an adjunct professor and trustee at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Maria is a mom to two amazing teenagers, and just recently, was ordained as a Minister at the Universal Life Church.