Gather: Words to the Wise

Meg Lewis is a Freelance designer, comedian, and performer specializing in creating positive emotional connections between happy companies and their audience through design, podcasts, educational videos, classes, and more! Her clients include Slack, Dropbox, VICE, Bloomingdale’s, VOX, Target, Condé Nast, BuzzFeed, & more!

Zipeng Zhu is a Chinese-born designer, art director, illustrator and animator in New York City who wants to make everyday a razzle-dazzle musical. His clients include Apple, Adidas, Adobe, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Twitter, Netflix, New York Times, Harry’s, Viacom, The New Yorker, Fox, Away, Animal Planet, CNN, MTV,  Refinery29, Chobani, and Samsung.

David Jon Walker is a Graphic Designer and Associate Professor of Art in Graphic Design at Austin Peay State University. He is also principal of Rhealistic Design, a design consultancy that is active locally and nationally. As a sought-after creative, David works with national political candidates, PACs, large non-profits, governmental entities, and varying businesses lending his talents to their marketing efforts to increase awareness and further campaigns. Living his best days, he examines social cues and the historical past to shape the aesthetic of his visual voice for personal lettering projects with fun and intention. His award-winning works have been recognized by Graphic Design USA, Campaigns and Elections, the International Association of Business Communicators, AIGA, Typism and the College Media Association.

Frankie Ratford is a full time adventurer obsessed with design, travel and business. She heads up The Design Kids and spends her spare time coaching her favourite Graphic Design businesses across the globe.

As a fledgling writer at Howell Henry Chaldecott Lury, a Co-Founder and Creative Director of St Luke’s, Karmarama and Do The Green Thing and a Partner at Pentagram, Naresh Ramchandani was once a next gen creative, has worked with many next gen creatives and has thoughts about why they’re so vital to the industry right now.

Mitch Paone is a Partner & Creative Director at DIA, a New York and Geneva based creative studio specialising in kinetic identity systems, graphic design and typography. Beyond his work with DIA, Mitch is a performing jazz pianist, composer, type designer, lecturer & educator.

Based in Switzerland, Mitch runs the BA Visual Communication & MA Media Design courses at HEAD – Genève🇨🇭

With a background in Graphic Design, Maddi now works as Strategy Lead for That Thing. After a “mid-degree-crisis” realising being a designer wasn’t right for her, she reworked her portfolio, powered into the world of networking and spent hours combing through branding jargon before going on to cut her strategic teeth working at DesignStudio and later, Made Thought.

On the side she runs creative platform Not Only — But Also with her partner Guy Munday where they are working to open the conversation on the industry to shine a light on the other roles that exist past Graphic Designer and generate new opportunities for young creatives looking for their first move. She’ll be sharing some of her journey to figuring out where she fit and some advice on how to get started in finding a position that’s right for you.

Mitch Goldstein is a designer, artist, and educator based in Rochester, NY.

He’s an Associate Professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, where he teaches in the School of Design. Over the past 15 years, he has taught at Rhode Island School of Design, Virginia Commonwealth University, Maryland Institute College of Art, and other institutions. He’s currently working on an MFA in Furniture Design.