Janine James

Janine James leads a multidisciplinary think tank of solutionists: designers, scientists, engineers, strategists and architects collectively known as The Moderns. Together, The Moderns offer holistic, eco-advanced solutions that are grounded in smart, effective business strategies and executed with noteworthy results across a multitude of mediums. James' efforts have helped businesses like American Express, Aveda and Sundance Cinemas to develop brand cultures that have spawned self-aggregating, self-sustaining communities. Perhaps their most celebrated work to date is the concept and design of the original brandscape for American Express, "Rewarding Lives": an ethereal, transformative environment that incorporates organic, tensile exhibit structures, phytoremediative ivy, chromotherapeutic light and curation of over 80 portraits by renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz. Before founding The Moderns in 1992, Janine was director of design and product development for ICF. Prior to that, she was part of the innovative Design Lab in Herman Miller's London office. James also lectures extensively on eco-advanced thinking and how companies can leverage sustainable practices to build brand equity and gain market share. She was recently a teaching fellow at Harvard University, where she worked with renowned psychiatrist and author Robert Coles. In 2003, James was both a keynote speaker at the AIGA Annual Conference in Vancouver and a visiting Walsh professor at the University of Oregon.
Do you have a design hero? My overall hero is Gandhi.
What would be your dream project? My dream project would be working with a global institute for world peace.
How and where do you find inspiration? I find inspiration by spending long periods of time in silence and working with Eastern philosophies.
What do you do when you are not at work? When not at work, I attend workshops and retreats where I study sound, Nada yoga and chakra psychology; I am a nine year student of these things.
What are you listening to, watching or reading? I'm currently listening to WBAI radio and Brahma Vishnu Maheshvara, by Shyamji Bhatnagar. I don't watch TV - I tend to watch documentaries and independent films instead. As for books, I'm currently reading about quantum physics, metaphysics and string theory.
Do you believe the economic recovery is finally here? I think prosperity was always here, depending upon one's consciousness.
Are you hopeful about 2004? Absolutely, I feel hopeful. If one sees him or herself as a solutionist, it's a very hopeful time.

Richard Boynton and Scott Thares

Wink was founded by Richard Boynton and Scott Thares as a means to provide effective design and communications solutions for commerce and culture. To date, the Minneapolis-based firm has done work for such clients as Target, Marshall Fields, Nike, Gateway Computers, Turner Classic Movies, The New York Times, Virus magazine (Denmark) and L'Abbaye College (France). Their work has received recognition nationally and internationally. Boynton and Thares describe their firm's design vision as follows: "We're about solving problems. Our solutions are largely concept driven, and specific only to the problem at hand. The aesthetic is always derived from the concept, and appropriate to the audience. The overall vision of the company is to essentially remain true to this approach, while keeping our creative intelligent, timely and honest. It has been pointed out to us that much of our work tends to be clever, understated and witty. This might be attributed to the fact that we don't try to remove our personalities from the process. We communicate ideas visually with the same sensibility that we would verbally. Wink is very honest in this regard."
Boynton received his BA in graphic design from Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida. He began his career in 1994 as a designer with Design Guys, and later served as a senior designer at the Minneapolis-based firm, Haley Johnson Design Company. Just prior to co-founding Wink, he served as the design director of advertising agency Hunt Adkins. Thares attended Moorhead State University, where he received a BFA in graphic design. He began his career as a design director for the John Ryan Company, an international retail marketing firm, where he worked from the firm's Sydney, Australia office. Upon his return to the States, he accepted a position as senior designer with the Minneapolis-based design firm, Design Guys.
[RB: Richard Boynton ST: Scott Thares]
What would be your dream project?
RB: A branding effort from scratch - the logo, packaging, all marketing materials and even advertising and TV - for a soda or soft drink that not only tastes amazing, but at the same time cures cancer and AIDS.
ST: It would be sushi packaging and would involve the rock group KISS, NFL Football and John Hughes' films. And once viewed by the public, it would be so impactful it would bring about world peace. Well, I can dream, right?
How and where do you find inspiration?
RB: From people who are far more talented than me.
ST: Antique shops, old books, my wife.
What do you do in your time away from work?
RB: Write and direct short films.
ST: Spend as much time as I can with my wife and son.
What are you currently listening to, watching or reading?
RB: The most exciting thing I've seen or heard recently is a DVD collection on music video directors Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze and Chris Cunningham.
ST: Listening to various comedic acts on iTunes, watching DVD movies on my G5 and reading Stupid White Men, by Michael Moore.
Do you believe the economic recovery is finally here?
RB: Almost.
ST: Somewhat.

Lynn Buckley

Lynn Buckley is art director of paperback covers at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, the literary publishing house located in New York. Her jacket designs include Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, the paperback edition of William Langewiesche's American Ground, series redesigns of Bernard Malamud's fiction and M.F.K. Fisher's food writing, as well as new editions of The Brother's Karamazov, The Iliad and The Odyssey, and Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch. She has also done extensive freelance work for Random House, WW Norton and Harper Collins.
What would be your dream project? I'm currently working on posters for a few upcoming off-Broadway plays. That has always been a dream project.
How and when do you find inspiration? New York. You can walk down the street and get inspiration for a project from where you'd least expect it.
The actress Emily Watson one said in an interview, "I research intensely and immerse myself completely in the project, then I put all that aside and wing it." This is the way I have done my best work. I read the entire manuscript of the book, I look at all the author's previous jackets and I look at anything at all that has to do with the book. Once, I even took a trip to the place where the book was set. Then, I sit down and forget all of that, and try to get the essence of the book down. If I don't do all the preliminary work, the ideas just don't come. But if you're too rigidly focused, you can't play around; you can't stumble onto interesting ideas.
What do you do in your time away from work? I'm a painter, so most of my free time is devoted to painting. I've also just taken up knitting, which is threatening to become an obsession. I do a lot of reading (obviously), swimming, vintage clothes and shoe shopping and yoga. And I'm addicted to the commentary on DVDs.
What are you currently listening to, watching or reading? Style Wars, a documentary about graffiti art. A lot of manuscripts for the new books I'm designing covers for. I'm listening to The Kills, Cat Power, the Lost in Translation soundtrack, Led Zeppelin and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs.