Gaby Brink
Editorial Director
Gaby Brink is the founder and creative director of Tomorrow Partners, where she leads an inter-disciplinary team of creative talents to craft communication programs that turn heads and grab hearts everywhere that brands live. She works with a wide spectrum of top global marketers and emerging companies. And because she believes that design plays a vital role in building a brighter future, she regularly applies her creative firepower to nurture environmental and social causes and help organizations with sustainability at their core thrive.
Gaby co-authored The Living Principles for Design, and with her team at Tomorrow, built its online community. Through her leadership on the Board of Directors of AIGA, she fosters dialogue and collaboration amongst professional organizations and the global design community to co-create tools and best practices for design as a catalyst for positive cultural change.
David Cowan
Editorial Director
David Cowan is a creative director, graphic designer, producer and consultant with over twenty-five years of experience working in the field of communications. David is a graduate of the Ohio University School of Communications. In 1996, David established Cowan Communications Arts (CCA), a full service branding, graphic design and communications agency in Santa Barbara, California. Cowan Communication Arts works to create exceptional brand identity, graphic design, advertising, broadcast, and public outreach programs for clients whose activities, products and/or services benefit society and the environment.
David is the AIGA Santa Barbara Sustainability Director. He also serves as the Communications Chair on the Board of Directors of Santa Barbara Channelkeeper. David was an adjunct professor of graphic design at the Santa Barbara City College School of Media Arts (SOMA). He is a Past President of the Santa Barbara Advertising Federation. David is also a singer/songwriter/guitarist, performing regularly in the greater Santa Barbara area.
Phil Hamlett
Editorial Director
Phil Hamlett has over twenty-three years of experience in a wide variety of design and communications roles. Currently, he is the Graduate Director of the School of Graphic Design at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, the largest private art and design school in the country. His students emerge from the MFA Program as advanced design practitioners and go on to acquire positions at the highest levels of the profession. Prior to the Academy, Phil was communications director at Turner & Associates in San Francisco, and in a previous life, a principal and director of creative services for EAI/Atlanta.
As a member of the AIGA board of directors, the founder of Compostmodern, and a co-author of the Living Principles for Design, he helps set the agenda for sustainable business practice within the design community at large.
Martha Koenig
AIGA Chapter Liaison & Organizer
Over the past 10 years as a visual designer in the creative industry, Martha Koenig has helped clients from overly-starched combover types to patchouli BabyBjörn lovers achieve their communication goals. For the past 3 years she has been an independent, enjoying the freedom of working with clients and agencies that are having a more positive impact on our environment and culture, including the Sierra Club, Dwell Magazine and Providence healthcare. She appreciates participating in the design community outside agency walls, and helps to create educational and inspiring programming centered on sustainable design practices, like SHIFT.
When not at her studio, she is often hopping around on her bike and learning a thing or two about a thing or two.
Rachel Martin
AIGA National Director of The Living Principles
Rachel Martin is design director of Rachel Martin Design LLC, a sustainable and socially responsible collaborative design studio in Charlotte, NC. As an avid do-gooder and advocate for sustainability, Rachel collaborates with socially conscious businesses and non-profits on a national level to help build unique brand messages that inspire positive change to shape our world and culture for the greater good. Prior to relocating to Charlotte, Rachel worked in New York City with top leaders in design at Louis Dreyfus and BBDO Worldwide.
Rachel is the AIGA National Director of The Living Principles, Advisory Board for AIGA Charlotte and Green Drinks Charlotte, and an adopter of the Designers Accord. She has helped launch AIGA Charlotte’s Eat Your Greens event series and the Design for Good Poster Initiative to educate designers to be more sustainable and socially responsible in their design work.
Gage Mitchell
Editorial Director
Gage Mitchell is partner & designer at Seattle-based Modern Species, a sustainable design studio specializing in organic food & beverage and personal care product brands. He also serves on the board of AIGA Seattle as the Sustainability Director for the chapter, and as an Editorial Director for The Living Principles.
Prior to founding Modern Species (in Madison, WI), Gage worked as a designer at boutique branding studios in Charlotte, NC and Denver, CO, and served on the board of AIGA chapters in North Carolina and Wisconsin. Gage’s work has been featured in design books, magazines, and popular blogs, and he’s won various awards for identity, print, advertising, direct mail, packaging, wearables, and environmental design projects. When not designing, he is usually hunting for unique food and appreciating delicious craft beer. He currently lives in downtown Seattle with his lovely wife and business partner, Jennifer Stewart.
Tom Biederbeck
Contributing Editor
Tom Biederbeck is an arts and design journalist with a passion for visual communication. He is the editor of the Mohawk Fine Paper’s site Felt & Wire and the Academy of Art University Newsfeed. A graduate of the University of Iowa, he is the former editorial director and editor in chief of STEP inside design and Dynamic Graphics magazines. When not tending to his sizable inventory of posters, prints and books, he hikes, bikes, skis, hunts, fishes, kayaks and tries to get lost in the great outdoors, sometimes with success.
Don Carli
Contributing Editor
Don Carli is senior research fellow with non-profit Institute for Sustainable Communication (ISC) where he is director of The Sustainable Advertising Partnership and other programs addressing corporate social responsibility, design for sustainability, life cycle assessment, innovation and sustainable sourcing. He is also Environmental Correspondent for PBS MediaShift and Sustainability Editor for Aktuell Grafisk Information magazine in Sweden. Don is an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Industry Studies Program Affiliate Scholar and has been an invited lecturer at New York University, MIT, Clemson University, California Polytechnic University, City University of New York and Columbia University. He is also a recipient of the P3 Foundation “Luminaire Award” recognizing outstanding achievement and personal dedication by graphic communication industry innovators.
William Drenttel
Contributing Editor
William Drenttel is a partner at Winterhouse, a design practice in Falls Village, Connecticut, focused on social innovation, online media, and educational institutions. He is also design director of Teach For All, an international education network. Through the Winterhouse Institute, he is leading a series of initiatives funded by the Rockefeller Foundation to develop models for design and social innovation, including conferences, symposia, case studies and editorial projects.
Drenttel is president emeritus of AIGA, a senior faculty fellow at Yale School of Management, and a fellow at New York University Institute of the Humanities. He is the editorial director of Design Observer, a leading website focused on design, social innovation, urbanism and cultural commentary.
Wendy Jedlicka
Contributing Editor
Wendy Jedlicka, CPP, is president of Jedlicka Design Ltd., a packaging design firm specializing in sustainable design and business strategies, co-coordinator for the o2 International Network for Sustainable Design in the US, and is packaging and business faculty for Minneapolis College of Art and Design’s groundbreaking Sustainable Design Certificate Program. A national caliber speaker, Jedlicka writes the regular “Sustainability Update” feature column for Package Design Magazine, and has been the contributing editor of two books: Packaging Sustainability: Tools, Systems and Strategies for Innovative Package Design, and Sustainable Graphic Design: Tools, Systems and Strategies for Innovative Print Design.
