Luke Hayman

Luke Hayman is the creative director of Travel + Leisure magazine. Up until January 2002, he was the creative director of Media Central and Brill Media Holdings, responsible for a range of publication and conference projects including the redesign of Brill's Content Magazine, Folio: Magazine, the Folio: Show and Kagan World Media. Prior to that, he was senior partner and associate creative director in the Brand Integration Group of Ogilvy & Mather. He served as the design director for I.D. and led the magazine to a number of accolades. He has also been a senior designer at Design Writing Research, where he worked on print and exhibition projects including the redesign of Architecture Magazine and Guggenheim Magazine. His work has been recognized by such organizations as ASME, the Society of Publication Designers, AIGA, Folio: Magazine and the Art Director's Club Young Guns II exhibition.
Do you have a design hero? Too many. All the obvious ones. These few stick out for me: Derek Birdsall, Lester Beal, Jasper Morrison. Major influence/ heroes has been three mentors I've been fortunate enough to work for. First, Simon Esterson, partner of Esterson Lackersteen in London, a rigorous, grid-loving modernist, designer of many excellent books, newspapers and magazines. Second, Tony Arefin, who I worked under at I.D. magazine, always open to anything new and sexy. And last, the virtuoso designer Abbott Miller, now a partner of Pentagram.
Do you have a dream project? Series of books or a complete identity for a publisher. I enjoy designing systems. Also, a newspaper - some of the Canadian and European newspapers are incredibly beautiful.
What do you do in your time away from work? There's not much of it, and it tends to be almost all with my two young boys. So it's a lot of Legos and Harry Potter. I do a little skiing, too.
What are you currently listening to, watching or reading? I've recently been watching a British comedy, The Office, filmed in a fake documentary style. It is funny and somehow painful to watch. Recent books: Life of Pi and Harry Potter.
Do you believe the economic recovery is finally here? Things feel a little more positive, but I'm shy of going much further than that.

Eric Teng

Eric Teng is creative director of DeSantis Breindel, a corporate branding and design firm. DeSantis Breindel partners with companies to define their brands, craft their key messages and communicate through design with clarity and impact. Teng leads a team of art directors and designers in the creation of a wide range of print and interactive communications. Firm clients include JP Morgan Chase, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, HIP Health Plans of New York, CIBC World Markets, Financial Guaranty Insurance Company, Trizec Properties, Eli Lily & Company and Symyx Technologies. Teng and his colleagues have won numerous design awards, including several AR 100 awards for annual reports. Prior to DeSantis Breindel, Teng served as associate creative director at Wright Communications. He holds a BFA degree from Carnegie Mellon University.
Do you have a design hero? I'm a huge fan of Saul Bass. His brilliant movie posters and title sequences always captured the spirit of the film and created an emotional connection with the audience. Bass once said that "Design is thinking made visual," which is pretty much the philosophy I try to follow in my work.
How and where do you find inspiration? I'm lucky: I live in New York City, the eye candy capital of the world. Riding the subway to work, walking the streets, taking in the sites and the sounds and the faces of the city provide enough inspiration for ten creative lifetimes.
What are you currently listening to, watching or reading? I'm listening to a lot of Maroon 5 lately, a band that fuses R&B and rock, kind of an updated Motown sound. On tv, I like Alias, practically anything on Nick at Nite, and I'm a fan of Ed (I have a family connection, but I'd like it anyway, really). I just finished a wonderful book, Michael Cunningham's A Home at the End of the World. I come from a close-knit family, but never tire of reading about dysfunctional ones.
Is there one product, tool or gadget you cannot live without? "Command z." Saves my butt every time.
Are you hopeful about 2004? I have noticed that clients are getting a bit more confident in recent months, committing to long-term projects that they might have put off a year or so ago. We've been fortunate in having a group of loyal, long-term clients over these past few years. Lately I've sensed that they are becoming more proactive about new initiatives, rather than focusing solely on projects that recur automatically each year, like annual reports. More generally, I think there's a much greater appreciation for the power and importance of design today than there was when I got into the business. Until fairly recently, a lot of people did not really understand what graphic design was all about. My father used to refer to me as a "commercial artist," and my mother told people I was in fashion design. Today, most people, including my parents, "get" what we do; in fact, they expect design excellence in everything they encounter, whether it's a martini glass from Pottery Barn or the business cards they give to clients.

Steven Addis

Steven Addis says that his first career was photography, "the really prestigious stuff: weddings and Bar Mitzvahs." Photography and loans got him through UC Berkeley with an undergraduate degree in marketing from the Haas School of Business. At 22, he entered brand management at The Clorox Company, where, he says, "I received great training and exposure to ad agencies and design firms. While at Clorox, I found that no branding firm truly blended brand strategy and design to make the creative better. In fact, the two sides of most agencies tended to hate each other." In 1987, at age 26, Addis joined a small design firm that had been a vendor when he was at Clorox, with the goal of "putting the intangibles at the heart of the work and having the empathy to understand what a brand might mean to its audience." Today, Addis has built an extremely successful practice by partnering strategists who have client-side experience with designers to build brands as a unified team. Clients over the years have included the likes of 24 Hour Fitness, Brite Smile, Electrolux USA, Intel, Kashi, Lego, Lindsay Olives, Pepsi, Pottery Barn, Preview Travel, Safeway and Sephora.
Do you have a design hero? Alfred Hitchcock. He was truly original in the way his visual sense helped tell a story.
What would be your dream project? We see brand integration as more than just aligning the visual expressions. Dream projects allow us to integrate consumer insights, analysis, strategy, ideas, design and implementation across all media.
How and where do you find inspiration? Travel. Other cultures and different perspectives.
What do you do in your time away from work? Relive childhood with my kids; take and collect photographs; travel.
What are you currently listening to, watching or reading? Every film I can see. I am a loyal patron of the Telluride Film Festival and see 16 to 20 films in three and half days.
Do you believe the economic recovery is finally here? Clients are realizing they have neglected their brands long enough. We have seen an uptick in business, but budgets are tight and competition is fierce. Clients are definitely taking advantage of the hungry design industry and structuring reviews in ways that can be very costly for firms. Too many firms have lowered prices beyond the point of reason. So, I see a recovery, but we still have a ways to go in finding the equilibrium to keep the industry healthy enough to add the value clients deserve.
Are you hopeful about 2004? 2004 marks 20 years in business for us. We've seen a lot along the way, and I'm always optimistic. We've made it through the toughest times and we're growing again. I predict the coming year will see some new dominant players emerge, as clients find the best talent in the independents.