Pratt Institute

Pratt Institute's Departments of Communications Design will present "Crowd Sourcing and Disruption," a panel discussion on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 6:30 PM in Memorial Hall on Pratt's Brooklyn campus. The panel will address the emergence of crowd sourcing models in the design and communication industries. Crowd sourcing refers to the use of information technology to parcel work out to a large group. This event is sponsored by Undergraduate Communications Design as part of the Undergraduate/Graduate Communications Design Lecture Series, and is free and open to the public.

The "Crowd Sourcing and Disruption" panel will include discussions by world-class design innovators including David Carson, principal and chief designer of David Carson Design, Inc.; Chris Clarke, chief creative officer of LBi International AB; Richard Grefé, executive director of AIGA; Craig Kanarick, consultant and founder of Razorfish; Ben Malbon, managing partner of BBH Labs; Mike Samson, founder of crowdSPRING; and John Winsor, CEO of Victors and Spoils. J. Roger Guilfoyle, Pratt professor of graduate communications design, will moderate the panel.

David Carson is the principal and chief designer of David Carson Design, Inc., with offices in Del Mar, California and Zurich, Switzerland. Carson's designs have been featured in over 180 magazines and newspapers worldwide. His work has been recognized by The New York Times; Newsweek; USA Today; Print Magazine; I.D. Magazine; The International Center for Photography, New York; The American Center for Design, Chicago; and the Society of Publication Designers, New York. Carson's extensive list of international clients includes Toyota, Mercedes Benz, Microsoft, Pepsi, and Xerox. He also serves as creative director for the Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston.

Chris Clarke has been the chief creative officer of LBi International AB since 2008. Clarke has previously served as founder of the pioneering digital agency Abel & Baker; executive creative director of Wheel; European executive creative director of Digitas agency Modem Media; and UK president and executive creative director of Digitas. He is also the founding member of Creative Social, a global networking group for senior digital creatives.

Richard Grefé is CEO and executive director of AIGA, the professional association for design. His major contributions to the association are in strategy, the formulation of new initiatives to enhance the competitive success of AIGA designers, and advocating design value. Prior to joining AIGA in 1995, Grefé crafted books at Stinehour Press, reported from the Bronx County Courthouse for the Associated Press, wrote for TIME Magazine on business and the economy, and managed the association responsible for strategic planning and legislative advocacy for public television.

Craig Kanarick founded the internet services firm Razorfish in 1995, where he served as chief creative officer and co-founder of Razorfish Studios, a media and entertainment publisher and distributor. During his seven years with Razorfish, Kanarick served as chair, chief scientist, and chief strategic officer. The firm serviced hundreds of clients including Sony, AOL, Pepsi, Time Warner, Conde Nast, IBM, Ford, and Microsoft. His design work for Razorfish and Razorfish Studios was added to the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1999. Since leaving the firm in 2001, Kanarick co-founded a multidisciplinary retail and experiential marketing studio and the Lab at the architecture firm Rockwell Group and recently spent a year as the managing director at Blockbuster Digital.

Ben Malbon currently serves as managing partner and founder of BBH Labs at Bartle Bogle Hegarty in New York. With over 10 years of account planning experience, Malbon has previously represented BMP DDB, London; BBH London as the global planning director on British Airways and Google; and BBH in New York as the head of account planning. He is a current member of the board of directors at Boulder Digital Works at the University of Colorado

Mike Samson, founder of crowdSPRING, is an Emmy Award nominated producer and production manager with more than two decades of experience in the film and television production industry. He has worked on such feature film and television projects as Wall Street, Men in Black II, Bull Durham, and Steven King's The Stand. He has received numerous honors individually and as a team member, including an Emmy Award nomination, Directors Guild of America Awards, and a George Foster Peabody Award. Samson is currently a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

John Winsor is CEO of Victors and Spoils, the world's first creative advertising agency built on crowd sourcing principles. He has previously served as the vice president/executive director of strategy and innovation at Crispin, Porter + Bogusky and founder of Radar Communications. Winsor is the author of Baked In: The Power of Aligning Marketing and Product Innovation (Agate B2, 2009), Spark: Be more Innovative through Co-Creation (Kaplan Business, 2005), and Beyond the Brand: Why Engaging the Right Customers is Essential to Winning in Business (Kaplan Business, 2004). Winsor's next book, "Flipped: How Bottom-Up Co-creation is Replacing Top-Down Innovation," will be published in April 2010 by Agate B2.