Louise Sandhaus
Full-time Faculty, Graphic Design Department
California Institute of the Arts
Louise has been co-organizer for Schools of Thoughts since its inception. She is the former Director of the Graphic Design Program at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Her design office, LSD, frequently partners with Durfee|Regn Architects to realize complex interpretive exhibitions. She also is part of Wild LuV, an “intersection” of the practices of Rick Valicenti (Thirst), Lorraine Wild (Green Dragon Office), and LSD, collaborating on projects of extensive scope.
Louise has curated and organized numerous conferences and events including, "Earthquakes and Aftershocks: Posters from the CalArts Graphic Design Program, 1986-2004", which was shown in 2004 at the Museé de Publicité, Paris. She has organized and programming numerous design education conferences, include that last two Schools of Thoughts conferences.
Louise’s work and writing have appeared in numerous publications including Step, PRINT, Eye, Metropolis, Émigré, and PRINT, AIGA 365, and The Art Directors Club have recognized her work, among many others. Her work is in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.
Petrula Vrontikis
Assistant Chair, Graphic Design Department
Art Center College of Design
Petrula initiated and co-organized the first and subsequent Schools of Thoughts conferences. A graphic designer, educator and author, she is Principal and Creative Director of Vrontikis Design Office--one of the top graphic design firms on the West Coast. Her work has won numerous awards, appeared in over one hundred books on graphic design and is part of the permanent collection of the Library of Congress. She is also an editorial contributor graphic design publications including Communication Arts, Graphis, Print, HOW, STEP, Novum and CMYK.
She has taught the advanced senior graphic design studies course at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena since 1989 and served as a national advisory board member of the AIGA. Her book, inspiration=ideas, is a creativity sourcebook for graphic designers. It is a 224-page exploration of the inspiration sources of top international designers. Petrula lectures at universities, to professional organizations and at conferences worldwide about her work and about graphic design education and inspiration. She served as a National Advisory Board Member of AIGA.
Denise Gonzales Crisp
Associate Professor, Graphic Design Department
College of Design, North Carolina State University
"Bi-located" in Raleigh and Los Angeles, Denise is principal of the itinerant studio SuperStove! and Associate Professor at the College of Design, North Carolina State University, in Graphic Design, a department she chaired from 2002 to 2006. She was the senior designer for Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California from 1998 to 2002, as well as designer for projects including Artext magazine, SciArc lecture series, and independent presses. Her design and writing have appeared in the Russian KAK, Graphis, Émigré, Metropolis, Eye, Print, Step and I.D. magazines, ACD 100, CA and Graphis. Her design work was featured in the 2002 Paris exhibition “East Coast/West Coast Dreams,” and more recently the 2005 anthology All Access: The Making of Thirty Extraordinary Graphic Designers Denise has lectured widely, including the Walker Art Center/Minneapolis, GraficEurope/Berlin, RMIT/Melbourne, ArtCity2005/Calgary and many colleges. A topic she has dubbed the "DecoRational" constitutes her ongoing design research, as do frequent forays into "alternative design writing." She is writing a textbook on typography, and she serves on the editorial board of the journal Design Criticism.
