Image via Complex Original
In a recent interview with Wired Magazine, design-legend Hartmut Esslinger said, “Today is what’s thought about long ago. Now today we have to we have to project, think, experiment, prototype the future.” This forward-gazing mantra describes the 25 people included in this feature on those shaping the future of design. This compilation of creatives involves a diverse group of professionals in various points in their career, working in different disciplines, with a range of cultural reaches and impacts. From recent graduates to influential educators to Pritzker Architecture Prize winners to controversial practitioners, each person included works in a future-minded manner, pioneering a new frontier in the world of design. Here's 25 People Shaping the Future of Design.
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Thom Mayne
Age: 69
Location: Los Angeles
Medium: architecture, industrial design
Thom Mayne founded Morphosis Architects in 1972. Mayne was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2005. Morphosis works on multiple scales from residential architecture to urban planning. Mayne described his style to the New York Times in 2005 after he won the Pritzker Prize: "The multiplicity of ideas is what I'm interested in. The hybrid in our society—where there is no singular idea of what is beautiful." This is an idea echoed in the name of his firm.
Marcus Wendt and Vera-Maria Glahn
Ages: 31 and 30
Location: London
Medium: generative design, digital art, new media
Marcus Wendt and Vera-Maria Glahn founded FIELD, a London-based creative studio. Their work is focused in digital and generative design. FIELD's clients include Deutsche Bank and the Museum of London. Wendt and Glahn have exhibited at the China Museum of Digital Art in Beijing and La Gaîté Lyrique in Paris.
Zaha Hadid
Age: 62
Location: London
Medium: architecture, industrial design, transportation design
In 2004, Zaha Hadid was first woman to be awarded the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize. Hadid's designs are known for their fragmented perspectives and distinct futuristic quality. She currently teaches at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and has taught at Columbia and Harvard. Hadid designed the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, Serpentine's second space in Kensington Gardens, which opened on Sept. 28.
Tokujin Yoshioka
Age: 46
Location: Shibuya, Tokyo
Medium: installation, industrial design, packaging design, interior design
Tokujin Yoshioka worked for Shiro Kuramata and Issey Miyake before working on his own in 1992. In 2002, he was awarded the Mainichi Design Award. Yoshioka is known for his dreamlike creations and dynamic installations. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Vitra Design Museum, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, and MoMA.
Paula Scher
Age: 65
Location: New York and Salisbury, Connecticut
Medium: environmental graphics, identity design, packaging design, publication design
Since 1991, Paula Scher has been a principal at Pentagram. Scher has taught at the School of Visual Arts, Cooper Union, and Yale University. She was awarded the AIGA medal in 2001, and her work is held in the permanent collection in the Bibliothèque nationae de France, MoMA, the Library of Congress, and the Denver Art Museum.
Edmund Liang
Age: 25
Location: Los Angeles
Medium: illustration, design, photography, motion
Edmund Liang is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work ranges from performance to exhibition design. With a background in illustration, Liang often engages multiple disciplines and multiple platforms in a single project. Liang's poster Shrimp Bycatch (2012) won first place for building awareness of seafood bycatch in Essential Ocean Principles at the National Geographic Society's headquarters.
Massoud Hassani
Age: 30
Location: Eindhoven, Netherlands
Medium: product design
Originally from Afghanistan, Massoud Hassani moved to Holland in 1998. Hassani attended the Design Academy Eindhoven and now runs a firm with his brother, Mahmud Hassani. Mine Kafon is Hassani's hand-built, wind-powered product that can be used to find and detonate landmines. Hassani's Mine Kafon contains an internal GPS unit to keep track of where it has been, mapping land that is theoretically cleared of mines.
Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec
Ages: 42 and 37
Location: Paris
Medium: industrial design
Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec are two brothers from Brittany who have worked with clients like Cappellini, Habitat, and Vitra. The Bouroullec brothers did the interior design for Issey Miyake's APOC shop in Paris where their firm is based. The Centre Pompidou-Metz held a major retrospective of the brothers' work in 2011.
John Maeda
Age: 47
Location: Providence
Medium: graphic design, computer science
John Maeda is the current President of the Rhode Island School of Design, and his work is held in the permanent collections of MoMA, SFMoMA, and the Cartier Foundation. Maeda became known for his groundbreaking work in electronic media, which merged computer programming with traditional artistic technique. He received the AIGA Medal in 2011, and published the book Laws of Simplicity in 2006.
Stanley Chen
Age: 28
Location: Los Angeles
Medium: design, illustration
Stanley Chen is a graphic designer and recent graduate of Art Center College of Design. He works across multiple mediums, including print, web, and environmental design. Chen's rebranding of the Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles' identity system won him a number of awards, including Best in Show from Applied Art Magazine in 2012.
Greg Lynn
Age: 49
Location: Los Angeles
Medium: architecture, industrial design
Greg Lynn works across multiple disciplines—practicing architecture, collaborating with Swarovski, and consulting with BMW. Lynn is known for his pioneering the use of CNC machinery. He is currently a professor at UCLA's School of Architecture and Urban Design. Lynn's work is held in numerous permanent collections, including ICA Chicago, MoMA, and SFMoMA.
Ricardo Dominguez
Age: 54
Location: San Diego
Medium: new media
Ricardo Dominguez is one of the co-founders of The Electronic Disturbance Theater, arranging "virtual sit-ins" and developing the phone app Transborder Immigration Tool which was designed to use GPS technology to help immigrants find water stations as they attempted to cross the border between Mexico and the United States. Three Californian Republican congressman launched a campaign against Dominguez that eventually led to a legal investigation involving the Transborder Immigration Tool and a virtual sit-in against the UC Office of the President that threatened his tenure at UCSD. Dominguez's investment in electronic civil disobediences and rethinking of nano-political interventions makes him a perpetually interesting and provocative figure.
Iris Van Herpen
Age: 29
Location: Amsterdam
Medium: fashion
On her website, Iris Van Herpen declares, "In all my work I try to make clear that fashion is an artistic expression, showing and wearing art, and not just a functional and devoid of content or commercial tool." Van Herpen has worked for Claudy Jongstra and Alexander McQueen and has been a guest member of the Parisian Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture since 2011. Van Herpen's outfits for Benjamin Millepied's untitled ballet premiered on Sept. 19 for the New York City Ballet gala.
Hella Jongerius
Age: 50
Location: Utrecht, Netherlands and Berlin
Medium: industrial design
Hella Jongerius studied at the Design Academy in Eindhoven, a city in the Netherlands, and was part of the Droog design group. She's known for her ability to meld mass production and handcrafting in innovative ways. Jongerius' work has been shown at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, MoMA, and the Design Museum in London.
Bjarke Ingels
Age: 39
Location: Copenhagen and New York
Medium: architecture
Bjarke Ingels in founder of BIG, a group of thinkers, designers, builders and architects. Before launching his own firm, Ingels worked at OMA in Rotterdam. He won the Golden Lion at the 2004 Venice Biennale and the Danish Crown Prince's Culture Prize in 2011. Ingels has also taught courses at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Rice University. His firm is currently working on a project to transform the Brooklyn Bridge Park with an impressive platform structure that rises over the East River.
Irma Boom
Age: 52
Location: Amsterdam
Medium: graphic design
Irma Boom is a graphic designer best known for her book-making. She founded her own office in 1991, and has taught at Yale and the Van Eyck Academy. 50 of her books are held in the permanent collection of MoMA.
Nick Briz
Age: 27
Location: Chicago
Medium: new media
Nick Briz is co-founder of GLI.TC/H, an international conference, festival, and gathering for glitch artists, coders, theorists, and enthusiasts. Briz teaches at the Marwen Foundation as well as SAIC. His work has been shown in a number of events and institutions, including the FILE Media Arts Festival in Rio de Janeiro, the Images Festival in Toronto, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
Thomas Heatherwick
Age: 43
Location: London
Medium:architecture, urban infrastructure, design
Thomas Heatherwick is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and was the youngest person to every be named Royal Designer for Industry. His studio designed the UK Pavilion in the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 and created the Olympic Cauldron for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Founded in 1994, Heatherwick's studio now operates as a team of 120 designers and architects.
Philippe Starck
Age: 64
Location: France
Medium: architecture, industrial design, interior design
"Providing a real way to deal with the urgent needs of environmental issues that is accessible to everyone is the new fight for the democratization of design," declares Starck on his website. Philippe Starck started his career by designing the interiors of two nightclubs in 1970s Paris. Since then, Starck has gone on to design a number of hotel interiors, products, and furniture, among other endeavors. He was the first designer to give a TED Talk, and his work is held in MoMA, the Vitra Design Museum, and the Design Museum.
Walter de Silva
Age: 62
Location: Germany
Medium: transportation design
At the age of 21, Walter de Silva joined Fiat's team as a junior designer. From there, de Silva worked at I.D.E.A. Institute under Renzo Piano and Franco Mantegazza, Alfa Romeo, SEAT, and Audi brand group. He is the current Head of Volkswagen Group Design.
Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh
Ages: 51 and 26
Location: New York
Medium: web, print, film, identities
This past January, Stefan Sagmeister announced that Jessica Walsh would become his business partner under the new name, Sagmeister & Walsh, after nearly 20 years of running the design firm on his own. Walsh previously worked at Pentagram Design and Print magazine, winning numerous design awards. Sagmeister has worked for Lou Reed, the Rolling Stones, HBO, among others, winning numerous awards and exhibiting his artwork internationally.
Aaron Koblin
Age: 31
Location: San Francisco
Medium: new media
Aaron Koblin is the current Creative Director of the Data Arts Team at Google. He's been nominated for a Grammy and came in first place for science visualization by the National Science Foundations for his Flight Patters project. Koblin's work is held in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Centre Pompidou, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Jonathan Ive
Age: 46
Location: San Francisco
Medium: product design, software
Jonathan Ive is the Senior Vice President of Design at Apple, Inc. Ive was awarded the title of Royal Designer for Industry by the Royal Society of Arts. Since joining Apple, Inc. in 1996, Ive has led Apple's design team in the creation of numerous products, including the MacBook Pro and iOS 7.
Lev Manovich
Age: 53
Location: New York
Medium: theory, computer media
Lev Manovich is a Professor at CUNY Graduate Center. In 2007, Manovich founded the Software Studies Initiative at CUNY in New York and Calit2 in San Diego. He's a prolific theorist, perhaps best known for The Language of New Media (MIT, 2001) in which he contextualized new media within the historical framework and conventions of old media.
Casey Reas
Age: 40
Location: Los Angeles
Medium: software, print, installation, performance
In 2001, Ben Fry and Casey Reas initiated Processing, an open source programming language promoting increased understanding an literacy between and within technology and the visual arts. Reas' work centers around algorithmic experimentation and the art of conditional systems. His work has been collected by a number of institutions, including the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Centre Georges Pompidou. Reas' work is currently on view in "ULTRACONCENTRATED," an exhibition at bitforms gallery in New York City, through Oct. 12.