Design Conferences
Unlike a magazine or an exhibition, a conference is a unique medium, a rare opportunity to capture an audience’s attention over several days. Since 2004 Chee Pearlman has been directing large-scale design conferences, always with a theme that draws back the curtain on the process of creating meaningful design. Each is curated to ignite provocative thinking and make interdisciplinary connections. Each becomes a deep-dive event in which the unique narrative Chee once cultivated on the pages of I.D. Magazine now leaps from page to stage.
Chee interviews Jonathan Ive at Radical Craft, 2006
On stage at Radical Craft
In conversation with Eiko Ishioka at Stories from the Source, 2004
Art Center Design Conference 2008: Serious Play
The most recent conference directed by Chee Pearlman at Art Center College of Design brought together inspired scientists, architects, entrepreneurs, artists, storytellers and tech wizards. The three-day event explored why play is essential to creativity and invention. “A joyride into the future of design,” said Charles Elachi, director of the Jet Propulsion Lab, “Serious Play” immersed the audience in wisdom, wit, and experience, including hands-on studios. More than 700 attendees discovered that play allows a suspension of inhibitions, releasing wonder and imagination.
Speakers
Irene Au, Designer, Google
Petra Blaisse, Interior and landscape designer
Tim Brown, President, IDEO
Stuart Brown, National Institute for Play
Michael Curry, Puppet master
Elizabeth Diller, Architect
Dr. Charles Elachi, Director, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Robert Lang, Origami virtuoso
David Macaulay, Author, The Way Things Work
John Maeda, President, RISD
Bruce McCall, Humorist, The New Yorker
Michael Moschen, Visionary kinetic artist
Aimee Mullins, Athlete and artist
John Oliver, Correspondent, The Daily Show
Philip Rosedale, Creator, Second Life
Helen Hood Scheer, filmmaker
Paula Scher, Artist and Pentagram partner
George Smoot, Nobel Prize-winning cosmologist
Jamy Ian Swiss, Sleight-of-hand artist, mentalist
Art Center Design Conference 2006: Radical Craft
The second in this series of design conferences explored the concept of thinking with your hands. from a rare onstage appearance by Apple’s lead designer Jonathan Ive describing how his company’s designs are driven by touch and feel, to Danny Hillis’s 3-D electronic topo maps, craft was elevated to art, and ingenuity found roots in the process of making. The idea that craft is a lowly art was turned upside down by high-tech makings such as the Mars Rover and Theo Jansen’s walking sand beasts.
Speakers
Constance Adams, Spacecraft designer
Andy Borowitz, Humorist
Billy Collins, Poet
Maurice Cox, Urban planner
Dave Eggers, Author and Community organizer
Dr. Charles Elachi, Director, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Martin Fisher, Social Entrepreneur
David Gallo, Oceanographer
Jeff Goodby, Advertising guru
Adam Gopnik, Writer
Bill Gross, Business Entrepreneur
Jim Hackett, Steelcase, Inc.
Nik Hafermaas, Chair, Graphic Design, Art Center
Danny Hillis, Applied Minds
Jonathan Ive, Lead designer, Apple
Theo Jansen, Artist/Engineer
Ricky Jay, Sleight-of-hand Master
Claudy Jongstra, felt Engineer
Harold Koda, fashion Curator, Met
Claudia Kotchka, Procter & Gamble
Bob Mankoff, Cartoonist, New Yorker
Erin McKean, Lexicographer
Isaac Mizrahi, fashion Designer
Dan Neil, Critic, L.A.Times
Jane Olson, Human Rights Watch
Wolf Prix, Coop Himmelb(l)au
Stafan Sagmeister, Graphic Designer
Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder
Jessica Yu, Director
Art Center Design Conference 2004: Stories from the Source
The first Art Center Design Conference, in 2004, revealed narratives of the creative process told by the designers themselves. It burst open the biodiversity inherent in the field. The inventor of the Segway was juxtaposed with the director of Pixar’s Finding Nemo; a design activist was followed by a creator of robots who draws inspiration from cockroaches. Cross pollination became the underlying theme, and story-telling became the spark of imagination.
Speakers
David Baltimore, Nobel Prize-winning scientist
Ricky Jay, Sleight-of-hand master
Ric Burns, Documentary filmmaker
Lee Clow, Advertising guru
James Dyson, Inventor, entrepreneur
Todd Eberle, Photographer
Dr. Charles Elachi, Director, Jet Propulsion Lab
Bran Ferren, Inventor, Applied Minds
Robert Full, Biologist
Frank Gehry, Architect
Peter Girardi, funny Garbage
Eiko Ishioka, Communications designer
Hella Jongerius, Dutch designer
Dorothy Kalins, Editor
Maira Kalman, Artist, author
Dean Kamen, Inventor
Sandra Tsing Loh, Writer, performer
Bob Lutz, Vice Chairman, GM
Greg Lynn, Architect
Thom Mayne, Architect
Bruce Mau, Designer
Cameron Sinclair, Architecture for Humanity
Andrew Stanton, Director, Pixar
Susan Szenasy, Editor-in-chief, Metropolis
Richard Weinstein, Urban designer
Lorraine Wild, Designer
Richard Wurman, Information designer
Speed of Light: New Materials and Technologies Conference, 2006
Presented by the Museum of Arts and Design at The New School, this gathering examined light, one of the universe’s most powerful forms of energy, as a design medium. Interdisciplinary in concept, it brought together international stars from physics, science, technology, architecture, design, and the visual and performing arts. from the macro story of the physics of light, to the emotional resonance of light as a storytelling medium, to the inventions of maverick designers, the conference explored the possibilities, poetics, and power of photons.
Speakers
Dr. Michio Kaku, Professor of Theoretical Physics
Dr. Craig Bernecker, The Lighting Education Institute
Brad Cloepfil, Architect
Dan Dubno, Technologist
Jules Fisher, Theater lighting designer
Dr. David Gallo, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Chris Levine, Light artist
Dr. Louise Lippincott, Chief Curator, Carnegie Museum of Art
Ingo Maurer, Lighting designer
Murray Moss, founder, Moss
Stephen Petranek, Editor-in-chief, Weider History Group
David Rockwell, Architect and designer
Ben Rubin, Media Installation artist