kHyal co-founded PUSH Workshops in 2007, talentEd in 2008, DesignerGrill in 2009, PUSH Design Camp in 2010 and the Fairfield County Adobe Users Group in 2011. She is the creator of The Weather sKwirl and BlipWorld. kHyal designs one-of-kind upcycled apparel and accessories under the name kHyal Kouture and is a member of the Women’s Internet History Project. Most recently, she launched MegaGlam to showcase her illustration, surface and character design — which includes a line of custom apparel and accessories.

Before founding fiZz — kHyal held positions ranging from Creative Director to VP of Marketing and Public Relations in a series of technology companies, healthcare organizations, educational publishing firms and big digital agencies. She also co-founded a software publishing company and a digital marketing and software development firm.

kHyal’s fine art and design have been exhibited in the American Visionary Art Museum, Pictoplasma–Berlin, New Britain Museum of American Art, la Gaîté Lyrique–Paris, Outsider Art Fair–New York, Housatonic Art Museum, City Museum–Washington, DC, Intuit–Chicago, Cooper Union, and galleries from New York to Los Angeles and London.

Speaking engagements and workshops include: FleetBoston Financial’s Women Entrepreneurs’ Connection, Advertising Women of New York (AWNY) Annual Career Conference, Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), Sacred Heart University, Connecticut Art Directors Club (CADC) Student Conference, The Creative Circus–Atlanta, School of Visual Arts (SVA)–New York and The Grove–New Haven.

Heine has more than thirty years experience in the marketing communications sector — 24 years in the field of creative professional recruitment and the development of all levels of talent for major brands, agencies, design firms, corporate communications and companies.

Heine has remained hands-on as a creative professional throughout his career, winning numerous design awards and accolades. He lectures frequently at design institutions and industry associations. Past engagements include: AIGA Connecticut, School of Visual Arts, Rhode Island School of Design, Creative Circus, Syracuse University, Noble Desktop, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Bridgeport, University of Connecticut, Central Connecticut State University, University of Hartford, Connecticut Art Directors Club, Independent Creative Club, Advertising Women of New York and the American Marketing Association.

Heine has served as Adjunct Professor of Illustration at the University of Bridgeport, and currently teaches Business Practices & Ethics at SASD, the new design program at the University.

Heine is an active Member of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), was a Founding Board Member of the AIGA Metro-North Chapter and served as Recruitment/Events Chair from 2009–2010. He is also a member of TDC, Art Directors Club/NYC, Spark/NYC, and Connecticut Art Directors Club (CADC). Heine was also a Board Member of the CADC from 1995–2000 and 2005–2008.

In 2007, Heine co-founded PUSH Workshops with kHyal. PUSH is a hybrid design education model the duo created to inspire, educate and inform creative professionals at all levels, through workshops, salons and events. In 2008, they co-founded TalentEd — a career development venture for creative professionals featuring resume consultation, portfolio review and coaching.

She is the author of 7 books, including The Designer’s Guide to Marketing and Pricing, The Creative Professional’s Guide to Money, Stop Pushing Me Around: A Workplace Guide for the Timid, Shy and Less Assertive, Self-Promotion Online, The Art of Self Promotion and Public Relations for Dummies, 2nd Edition.

Benun has given presentations for art schools and international trade organizations, including the School of Visual Arts (SVA) and Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), HOW Design Conference, Freelancers Union, Creative Freelancer Conference, AIGA and Graphic Artists Guild, Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario, American Marketing Association, Business Marketing Association, Advertising Photographers of America, ASMP, Editorial Freelancers Association, the NYU Entrepreneurship Summit, the Usability Professionals Association (several local chapters) and many ad clubs around the country.

She started her business in 1988 and has been self-employed for all but 3 years of her working life. She has a B.A. in Spanish from Tufts University.

Ilene formerly was the Director of Typeface Development for International Typeface Corporation (ITC) where she developed more than 300 text and display typefaces with such respected and world-renowned type designers as Sumner Stone, Erik Spiekermann, Jill Bell, Jim Parkinson, Tim Donaldson, and the late Phill Grimshaw. She “cut her typographic teeth” by working on Upper and Lowercase (U&lc) and other type projects with such legendary icons as Ed Benguiat, Aaron Burns and Herb Lubalin.

Her clients include International Typeface Corporation (ITC), Monotype Imaging Corporation, Adobe, Linotype, Time Inc., Whole Foods, Harlequin Books, Somerset Entertainment, Integrated Marketing, Parents Magazine, MeadWestvaco, Nationwide Insurance, Life is good, and Johnson & Johnson. Ilene has written for HOW, Dynamic Graphics, STEP Inside, as well as authoring the popular column, fy(t)i For Your Typographic Information for fonts.com, as well as TypeTalk for creativepro.com. Her book, Type Rules! The designer’s guide to professional typography, 3rd edition, has received numerous accolades from the type and design community. She conducts her widely acclaimed Gourmet Typography workshops internationally.

In 2002, he founded Glitschka Studios, a multi-disciplinary creative firm. The studio shines as a hired creative gun for multi-national ad agencies, medium to large design firms, and in-house corporate art departments working on a diverse range of illustrative design projects across a broad range of genres.

Von also teaches digital illustration and speaks internationally at design events and conferences on the topic of design, illustration and the creative process. He has authored four books geared for the design community and has had his work published in hundreds of design publications world wide.

You can get more information and view his work at www.vonglitschka.com.

He also wrote From Passion to Profit: 11 days to build a design business, an ebook that has helped hundreds of designers take their passion for design and turn it into a steady profit. The book includes advice on how to find clients, manage projects, and how to make your first piece of profit.

Connect with Preston on twitter @prestondlee or on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/graphicdesignblender.

Neil is a co-founder and management team member of CreativeLatitude.com, a popular resource for creatives and the clients they serve. He is also associated with No!Spec.com, a site that combats the proliferation of speculative work requests made to the design industry and a partner in Fast Coconut, an Internet-based design, marketing and programming collective.

He is an avid writer on marketing, promotion and business topics. He authors two popular blogs, Inside the Marketing Mind and NeilTortorella.com. Neil’s writing can also be found on BoDo – Business of Design online.com, where he’s a founding team partner and author of the Marketing Minute. In addition, Tortorella has been a contributing writer for HOW Magazine, a leading graphic design publication. He is the author of Starting Your Career As A Freelance Web Designer published in 2011 by Allworth Press.

He has conducted workshops and presentations about the business of design, sales and marketing to many business organizations including ASMP, Graphic Artists Guild/Pratt Institute, HOW Design Conference and is a frequent speaker at conferences and universities.

Tortorella is featured in the book, The Savvy Designer’s Guide to Success, by Jeff Fisher and in Creatively Self Employed, by Kristen Fisher. He is also featured in, Design Matters: Portfolios, by Maura Keller. Neil has also been featured in several HOW Magazine articles, Pitney Bowes’ Priorities Magazine and the Art Institute’s InSite Magazine.

Feedback and input from the Industry Advisory Council will be instrumental to GraphicDesign.com in areas such as site design, user experience, content topics, suggested new contributors as well as major site initiatives. Both as individuals and as a group the Advisory Council will represent voices of leadership from within a broad cross-section of the graphic design industry.

We are already growing at an incredible rate and, with a domain name such as GraphicDesign.com, there is a big responsibility to serve the industry and provide news, articles and resources that are relevant (i) to professionals within the industry, (ii) to prospective consumers wanting to engage/hire professionals within the industry and (iii) to students aspiring or considering a career in graphic design.

The site has already announced two participants of the Advisory Council. One of the members is Matt Hocking who not only has extensive experience as a graphic designer but has also directed and lectured graphic design all over the world. Hocking established the Shillington School in New York, and is now offering his creative talent to projects that help socially responsible businesses.

Also joining the Advisory Council is Dailey Crafton. He is a design lecturer and founder of “LiveFromBklyn,”. At present, Crafton is the creative force behind the Brooklyn-based studio, putting his upmost effort into making sure that the design is rock solid. Before founding Livefrombklyn.com Crafton was at L’oréal Paris, where he oversaw various promotional design projects.

Julia Wild, Editor and Marketing Director of GraphicDesign.com stated: “The GraphicDesign.com team are looking forward to re-launching the site with the right user experience and delivering the content that the target constituents of the website want to read. With the domain name GraphicDesign.com i will work closely with our writers and advisory council in order to serve the industry in a positive way”.

Watch this space. Over the next week or so GraphicDesign.com will announce more members of their advisory board. There will be a new section added to the website listing all members of the council and hopefully over the next few months with hard work and expert advice the launch of the new GraphicDesign.com will shortly follow.

For those of you who have a history of experience and leadership within the graphic design industry and who would be interested participating in the Council please get in touch with Julia Wild, Editor and Marketing Director for GraphicDesign.com. Her contact email address is Julia at graphicdesign dot com. We know everyone’s time is valuable and limited. An informal communication line to each advisory council member will be kept open and Julia will be happy to have an initial call with anyone who would like to understand more.

Follow @AtGraphicDesign on Twitter for upcoming announcements of additional members of the Advisory Council and to keep up with the latest industry news. Regular updates will also be posted here on the blog to keep you informed with the progress.

1. ARTIST AS ENTREPRENEUR: Whether due to the much storied “broken” advertising agency model, poor economic outlook, lowered barriers to entry or a combination of factors, this trend continues to pick up steam. Michael Wolf does a fantastic job detailing the “whys” in his article “Why 2012 will be the year of the Artist-Entrepreneur” on GigaOm. Speaking from my own experience, I view this as a much needed renaissance. One that is key to balancing the shift towards creative content commoditization (try saying that three times fast). It can be seen in everything from the success of Etsy to the relatively recent course and degree offerings at various academic institutions such as the School of Visual Arts (SVA) “Designer as Author” MFA which is “… predicated on the growing need for content providers throughout the visual media.” Guest lectures from my personal idols Ellen Lupton and Milton Glaser, as well as many notable others are available on SVA’s site and iTunes. Other programs in this niche include New York University’s M.A. in Graphic Communications Management “…designed for communications professionals seeking to move their careers forward by sharpening their business prowess …” which focuses on cultivating management and leadership skills in all areas of Graphic Communications including graphic design and Parson’s New School for Design certificate in Design Business providing “… quick and convenient training in state-of-the-art best practices in management, leadership, and entrepreneurship for the evolving new economy.”

2. DESIGN THINKING: A good, plain language definition of design thinking can be found in this article by Fast Company. Simply put, it consists of properly defining the problem, creating and considering multiple solutions, refine a smaller sampling of options and repeat until the optimal solution is found. A more recent and in depth view at the process can be found on Innovation Management’s site here. Design thinking is sure to take it’s place along with brainstorming, rapid prototyping, flattened hierarchies and other business ideas that are quick to catch on, but much harder to do, never mind do well. Reena Jana sums up the impetus behind what she terms “design-led problem solving” quite nicely in her blog post and interview “Four experts predict 2012’s innovation and design trends” “Incubation is the next Innovation.”

3. HTML 5 IN FULL EFFECT: Development side desire for the flexibility and greater ease of open standards coupled with advertiser side pressure to take advantage of iOS traffic and Adobe’s announcement at the 2011 Adobe MAX conference that they will be “discontinuing further development of Flash Player for mobile devices” will help propel HTML 5 forward in 2012. Further helping it along are new capability developments, which according to TechCrunch include enabled content creation apps among others.

BONUS TREND: Continuing from last year and acting as a counterpoint to the cool minimalism of technology, my bonus trend pick goes to hand drawn effects and illustration, especially in advertising.

(Disclosure: the author is a graduate of New York University’s M.A. in Graphic Communications Management and Technology.)

Nicole has a Masters in Graphic Communications Management and Technology from New York University and a Bachelor of Arts is in English Literature from Purchase College, where she was awarded the Bell Chevigny prize in the Humanities for Feminist Studies. Among her many interests are art, design, literature and technology. When not busy at work on one of her latest projects she can be found spending time with her husband and their two mischeivous cats. Her portfolio can be viewed online here