Robin Landa is a Distinguished Professor in the Michael Graves College, Kean University. She has written over twenty books about graphic design, advertising design, branding, creativity, and drawing including Graphic Design Solutions, 6th Edition, Advertising By Design, 3rd Edition, and Nimble: Thinking Creatively In The Digital Age, which received an outstanding review in Communication Arts. She has won numerous awards for her design, writing, and research, including awards from the National Society of Arts and Letters and the National League of Pen Women. She received the 2015 Human Rights Educator award, 2013 Kean Teacher of the Year, and the Carnegie Foundation lists her among the great teachers of our time. Robin was the sole judge of the 2014 HOW Logo Competition and is a favorite speaker at the HOW Design conferences.Crack The Spine published Robin s short story, Bottled Up. Recently, Robin presented on the subject of personal branding at Columbia University and HOW Design magazine has published many of her articles. She is a Chair on the governance board of Design Incubation, a design research and practice organization. Visit her online at www.robinlandabooks.com .
Rose Gonnella is currently a twenty-five year experienced professor in the Visual Communications Program of the Department of Design at Kean University in New Jersey. She teaches courses in design theory, studio skills and computer technology and has also developed the school's web design curriculum. She currently serves on the executive board of the Art Directors Club of New Jersey (ADCNJ) and as the Director of the Kean University/ADCNJ "Thinking Creatively" design conference. Ms. Gonnella is an educator, artist, designer and writer who has been awarded membership in two scholarly academic organizations, the Phi Beta Kappa National Honor Society in 1980 and the Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society in 2001. She has received grants from the Mid-America Arts Alliance International Residency Project, the Mid-Atlantic Residency Grant Project and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship. She has also received several awards from Kean University, including the Presidential Award for Distinguished Research/Creative Work, the Computers in Curriculum Released Time Award, the Alumni Association Grant and the Faculty-Student Research Award. Ms. Gonnella is a practicing artist and designer who has exhibited both nationally and internationally for fifteen years. Her drawings are included in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Art and Archaeology in Columbia, Missouri and other public and private collections. Her design work primarily revolves around Kean University's intellectual journal, the Kean Review, for which she is the Creative Director. Ms. Gonnella is also the author and co-author of several books and has written many magazine articles on creativity, art and architecture for several national publications. In addition, Ms. Gonella has written over two hundred and fifty articles on art, design and architecture for two newspapers in Nantucket, Massachusetts.
Now in his own design studio, Steven Brower most recently was the creative director for Print magazine. He is the recipient of numerous national and international awards and his work is in the permanent collection of Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institute. He is on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts, Marywood University, and Kean University.