I’ve spent a few hours over the past few days as part of the Experience Expression launch talking with GK VanPatter from Humantific. GK spoke at Mix07 about Design 3.0 (read LukeW’s review of the Mix talk). As my new employer releases a new design tool and toolkit, Expression, it’s great to see a speaker that challenges traditional design thinking and design training conventions be a part of the launch. GK is presenting a model for transforming design and designers into business leaders.
However, one of the more interesting observations that GK provided was that a large number of leading design thinkers are Canadian.
- GK VanPatter
- Patrick Whitney
- Bruce Mau
- Frank Gehry (although Gehry is focused on the content not the process)
- Roger Martin
This is incredible! Canadians are impacting both the “content” and the “process” of design. Five influential designer thinkers all from Canada. (You could even stretch this to include Karim Rashid who was raised in Canada). There are others including Alexander Manu that are contributing to the changing face of design.