Alex Okada is the Chief Creative Officer at Havas Lynx, one of the leading global healthcare communications networks. Before joining Havas Lynx and entering the pharma world, Alex worked for over 20 years in the consumer industry. Alex held positions as Executive Creative Director for international accounts at MullenLowe London, Chief Creative Officer at Publicis Spain, Chief Creative Officer at McCann Brazil, Regional Creative Director for Latin America at Leo Burnett US, and Executive Creative Director at Leo Burnett Portugal. His career began in Brazil, where he worked at Leo Burnett and DDB. Combining powerful storytelling, innovative technology and disruptive ideas, Alex has won 20 Cannes Lions trophies and numerous other accolades at prestigious competitions such as the D&AD, LIA, One Show, Eurobest, Clio Awards, Effie Awards, El Ojo de Iberoamérica, and many others. Throughout his career, Alex has worked in several countries, led campaigns and teams across five continents, and served as president of the Jury in El Ojo de Iberoamérica and Lisbon Health Awards and as a jury member at Eurobest, Clio Awards and FIAP. Some of the prestigious brands Alex has collaborated with include Sanofi, AstraZeneca, Merck, UCB, GSK, and Roche in pharma, as well as Persil/OMO, Coca-Cola, Renault, Fiat, GM, McDonald’s, Knorr, Amazon Prime Video, Greenpeace, Mastercard, Visa, Unilever, P&G, Heinz, Kellogg’s and Fundação Bradesco.
Jury
Ara Coutts is a fashion photographer based in Toronto, Canada. She is often fascinated with how people dress, and enjoy telling stories through the lens of fashion. Photography is a second career for me. Prior to picking up a camera, she worked in tech and e-commerce and have led teams of creatives (i.e. writers, photographers, designers, and editors), and business professionals (i.e. project managers, sales, and operations). She believe this makes me a better photographer, as She try to understand how the worlds of art and commerce connect.
Bo Zhang is an accomplished artist, designer, and curator with a Master of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design and industrial design studies at Scuola Politecnica di Design in Milan. In 2019, he founded Desz Office, a creative studio based in Beijing and New York that blends art, design, and material culture to inspire contemporary art and design imagination. In 2024, he co-founded RE/CRAFT, an innovative platform dedicated to revitalizing traditional crafts by integrating them with modern design and culture. Bo actively promotes global collaborations with design weeks and craft communities, aiming to transform traditional craftsmanship into lifestyle products with cultural and commercial value
Damjan Geber is the CEO and Creative Director of Brigada, a leading spatial design and architecture agency based in Zagreb, Croatia. Recognized as a pioneer of functional retail design in Southeast Europe, Geber has established himself as a key figure in experiential and interior design, with a focus on creating spaces that are both aesthetically compelling and strategically effective.
Dr. Danny Dong-Yeong Lee (이동영) is a distinguished professor in the Department of Applied Art Education at Hanyang University in Seoul. He earned his PhD in Design from the prestigious Goldsmiths, University of London, complementing his Master’s degrees in Critical Practice and Spatial Design. His academic and research focus lies in convergent design, cross-cultural methodologies, and design thinking.
A strong proponent of practice-based learning, Professor Lee actively connects academia with industry. He leads “Live Design Projects,” guiding students in significant collaborations with major global companies such as LG Electronics and LEGOLAND® Korea Resort. In addition to his teaching, he serves as the Director of the Hanyang Art+Design Education Center (HEAD Lab). Through his multifaceted roles, Professor Lee is a key figure in shaping the future of design education, fostering innovation, and preparing students for real-world creative challenges.
Daryl Villanueva is a CEO and a designer of Saigon based Bandit9 Motorcycles best known for its comes-out-straight-from-sci-fi look. Started everything from scratch, Vietnam origin motorcycle’s extraordinary look is being translated into many languages. Exhibited in several acclaimed mobility museums and galleries across the world: Peterson Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, M.A.D. Galleries in Geneva and in Dubai to name a few. Further more recently took seats in luxury department stores: Le Bon Marché in Paris and in Lane Crawford in Hong Kong for both exhibit and sale.
Estelle Monteillet was born and raised in Paris, where she attended art school before becoming an art director at W&Cie, an influential creative agency. She then spent several years as Senior Art Director at Lonsdale, an award-winning creative agency, specializing in editorial design. At DoThings, Estelle leads a talented team of creatives across a range of projects, including branding, editorial design, digital design, content creation, art direction, and packaging for clients such as Brown Harris Stevens, The Related Companies, G.H. Bass, Aztech Mountain, and Future Fair.
Jaeyoung founded 6699press in 2012 to spotlight underrepresented voices in Korean society. His first project, We Live in Seoul, captured the everyday stories of North Korean refugee teenagers, challenging stereotypes through workshops and interviews. With Korea, Woman, Graphic Designer 11, Jaeyoung and co-organizer Kim Lynn highlighted the career challenges faced by women designers, creating a network of shared experiences. His book Six delved into the lives of LGBTQ individuals in Korea, fostering dialogue and understanding at a time of limited public discussion. Through 6699press, Jaeyoung uses design publishing to promote empathy and social change.
Jean-Baptiste Levée is a renowned French type designer and founder of the independent foundry Production Type. Since 2012, he has created over 100 typefaces used across industries such as fashion, media, and moving pictures. Levée’s work integrates historical and technological elements with artistic nuance, resulting in versatile digital type platforms. His designs have garnered multiple awards and are included in prestigious collections like the French National Library and the Decorative Arts Museum of Paris. He also serves on the board of ATypI and advises the French Public Investment Bank on design innovation. Production Type operates internationally, with offices in Paris and Shanghai, focusing on sophisticated retail typefaces for a global clientele.
Kevin Gatta is a Distinguished Professor with Tenure at Pratt Institute’s Graduate Communications Design department, where he has taught since 1981 and received the institute’s Distinguished Teacher Award. For over four decades, he has successfully balanced his academic career with a robust professional practice.
Professor Gatta honed his skills at legendary studios like Herb Lubalin Associates and Seymour Chwast’s Pushpin Group before establishing his own firm, Gatta Design & Company, in 1988. His firm has served an impressive roster of clients, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and The Ford Foundation. He is also the co-author of influential textbooks such as “Foundations of Graphic Design.” Gatta’s career exemplifies a powerful synthesis of influential design practice and dedicated, award-winning education, shaping generations of designers while producing work for world-renowned institutions.
With remarkable design talent, Rituparna gained additional experience and expertise at renowned design firms in Delhi, California, and Florida on geographically diverse projects scaling from residential design to large master planning and infrastructure projects. Early in her career, she has already earned numerous design and service awards and honors, and accolades from clients at her own firm. Within two years of inception, under her direction, the portfolio of the studio extended beyond landscape design for high-end residences in Coconut Grove, North Miami, and New Delhi to working on research and analysis for ecologically-restorative and socially-just projects in Vietnam, China, Mozambique, and Timor-Leste.
Rituparna was honored with the Exception Emerging Professional Award by the Florida chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA).
Sarang Kulkarni is a distinguished Indian type designer and co-founder of Ek Type, a collaborative type foundry established in 2011 that specializes in creating contemporary, multi-script fonts across Indian languages. An alumnus of Sir J. J. Institute of Applied Art, he also founded WhiteCrow Designs in 2005, a Mumbai-based studio focused on multilingual branding, custom type design, and calligraphy. Sarang’s notable typefaces include Modak and Baloo, many of which are open source and available on Google Fonts. He is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale and actively promotes Indian scripts through workshops and the Aksharaya Society, dedicated to Indian letterforms and typography. His work has earned prestigious awards such as the D&AD Pencil and Kyoorius Blue Elephant
Somchana Kangwarnjit graduated from King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang with a degree in industrial design. In 2009, he founded Prompt Design, helping his clients to build brands and businesses by delivering new experiences in strategies and design executions. Prompt Design’s clients include Nestlé, Uni-President, CP, Singha, Lotte, Glico, Diageo, Boots etc. He is regularly invited to be a committee or jury member for design competitions and often serves as a guest columnist and professor for many publishers and top universities.
Prompt design is the branding studio and packaging design team which has been winning many world class awards as many as 71 trophies in many worldwide competitions from many renown design institutions in USA, China, Japan, Germany, UK, Australia and many others. With recognition in our design expertise of the prompt design team and his ingenious intuitive design experience, Somchana Kangwarnjit -the founder of prompt design has been invited to join the international jury panel to judge in many world leading and prestigious packaging design competition.