Meet our 2013 judges:

Denise Gonzales Crisp
Professor, Graphic Design, College of Design, North Carolina State University
Designer, SupérStové!

“Bi-located” in Los Angeles (CA) and Raleigh (NC), Denise Gonzales Crisp is Professor of Graphic Design at North Carolina State University, and designer of the itinerant studio SuperStove! Her design and writing are published internationally: in Emigré, Items, Form, Design and Culture Journal, Design Observer, and Eye; in anthologies such as All Access: The Making of Thirty Extraordinary Graphic Designers and Design Research: Methods and Perspective; and in exhibitions, including: Dimension+Typography; East Coast/West Coast Dreams; Getting Upper. Research and creative concentrations are: promoting the “DecoRational” in design, most recently in the exhibition Deep Surface: Contemporary Ornament and Pattern at CAM Raleigh, co-curated with Parsons professor Susan Yelavich; critical fiction writing and inquiries into the use of fiction in design; exploring implications of the means we use to communicate through text, in a body of work she calls “Tools That Make Type;” and remodeling typography pedagogy, in the book Graphic Design in Context: Typography (Thames & Hudson, September 2012). DGC holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts.

Jessica Ivins
Senior UX Specialist, AWeber

While in college, Jess took a class devoted to HTML and CSS, fell in love, and never looked back. She began her career as a front-end developer, and while working in the real world, she fell in love again with the principles of user-centered design. Previously a senior experience designer at Happy Cog, she is now Senior UX Specialist at AWeber.

A strong advocate for universal usability, Jess is the first to admit that she’s befuddled by a lack of clarity in everything from road signage to food packaging. She’s passionate about making things easy and enjoyable to use and regularly contributes her time and experience to the UX community. She has served as an officer for Philadelphia’s UX community PhillyCHI and organizes meetings for the Philadelphia UX Book Club. She has spoken at numerous conferences including the 2011 IA Summit, SXSW 2012, Midwest UX 2012, The Wharton UI Conference 2011-2012, and Pittsburgh Web Design Day 2012.

In her spare time, Jess busies herself with reading, cooking, and enjoying a fine glass of wine. She’s also mildly obsessed with the TV show Forensic Files.

Joe Marianek
Apple

Joe Marianek is an Ohio-born interdisciplinary designer based in San Francisco. After earning his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Joe moved to New York and began his career as a design assistant in the studio of Milton Glaser. He later worked as a designer with Paula Scher at Pentagram, and at Landor Associates. In 2007, he returned to Pentagram to join Michael Bierut’s group as an Associate Partner. Joe has also run his own freelance practice for nearly a decade, focusing on non-profit and cultural clients, and also working with large international branding projects. He recently moved west to join Apple.

He has been widely recognized by global design organizations including the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), The Art Directors Club (ADC), The Type Director’s Club (TDC), Society of Publication Designers (SPD), and D&AD. His work has been featured in many industry publications including Graphis, AdWeek, Metropolis, Communication Arts, and Print among others. He was included in Graphic Design USA’s “Designers to Watch” and in 2007, he received the Print New Visual Artist “20 under 30″ award, which is given to twenty designers under the age of thirty. In 2009, he was awarded a Gold Cube from the ADC and in 2010 he was named an ADC Young Gun.

Joe served as vice president of the Rhode Island Chapter of the AIGA from 2009 to 2011, and has lectured and judged competitions internationally. He and has volunteered and collaborated on pro-bono design projects with the Taproot Foundation. He is a contributing writer for the blog UnderConsideration. Since 2007, he has taught senior thesis and typography courses at the School of Visual Arts in New York.