Bios for 2008 nominees

Stanley Hainsworth grew up in a small town in Western Kentucky, right between Possum Trot and Monkey’s Eyebrow, which taught him an appreciation for multiple retail options. After pursuing an acting career for some years, he spent several years at Nike as a creative director, where he worked on everything from hangtags to annual reports to the Olympics. He then decided to embark on an adventure in Denmark at the Lego Company as its global creative director. After a total visual overhaul of the Lego brand from top to bottom, including packaging, the web, retail and brand stores, he heeded the call to return to the states where he thought it would be fun to work for a company named after the first mate in Moby Dick—Starbucks. And there he now resides, in the upper left hand corner of the United States, as their global creative director, learning more about the mighty coffee bean than he ever thought possible. Hainsworth has spoken worldwide on brand design and has received many awards including Communication Arts, Graphis, I.D., Print, AIGA, The Library of Congress, Type Directors Club, HOW International, NW Design Awards, Retail Interiors and MAPIC.

Elva Rubio is executive vice president and creative director at Bruce Mau Design and is a co-founder of Mau’s Chicago-based studio, Rubio Studios. Most recently, Rubio was design director for Gensler’s Chicago office. In that position, Rubio led the design of the Center on Halsted, which recently opened to widespread praise. Under her direction, the firm also won commissions for Chase Bank, the Chicago Transit Authority and the Hyatt Regency, the latter of which was featured in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s green architecture exhibition, “Sustainable Architecture in Chicago: Works In Progress.” Rubio’s work for Pond Studios won both Distinguished Building and Interior Architecture awards from the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 1997. She has also received more than 20 AIA awards for work ranging in Urban Design, Architecture and Interiors.

Rubio serves on the board of the Chicago Architecture Club, is chairman of the Burnham Prize, and co-founder of the Chicago Prize and Emerging Visions competition. Rubio’s work was featured in the Ten Visions exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago and through the Mayor’s Institute on City Design, and showcased in the Women in Chicago Architecture exhibit at the Art Institute.

Rubio has complemented her professional practice with teaching engagements at the School of the Art Institute, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She currently is an associate professor at UIC’s School of Architecture, where she teaches undergraduate- and graduate-level studios.

Khoi Vinh is the design director for NYTimes.com, where he leads the design group in user experience innovation. He and his team are responsible for the creative design of new online features, functionality and content for the leading news site.

Vinh currently holds a seat on AIGA New York’s board of directors. Since 2000, he has also been the author of Subtraction.com, a forum for his extensive writings on design, technology and user experience matters. And in the past year, Khoi co-founded A Brief Message.com, where he is both the publisher and creative director. Prior to joining the New York Times, Vinh was a founding partner at the New York City design studio Behavior LLC. He has an extensive history in consultative design services for clients in a wide range of industries, and he earned a BFA in communication design from Otis School of Art and Design.

Khoi is a recipient of the Gold Award for new media from the Society of Publication Designers.

Brad Weed is the director of user experience design and research for the Windows and Windows Live product line at Microsoft. Prior to Windows he was the user experience manager for Microsoft Office. His contributing work on Office 2007 is widely recognized as one of the biggest paradigm shifts in the history of the industry. In 2003, he received the IDSA IDEA Gold Award; Microsoft’s first IDSA award for software design. With more than 16 years at Microsoft, he’s been instrumental in shaping the role of design at Microsoft and in the industry. He has also been instrumental in advancing the software interaction design education in schools around the world, most recently as a Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Before joining Microsoft in 1992, he worked as a user interface designer and engineer for Wavefront Technologies in Santa Barbara, combining his passion for information design, computer graphics and socio-behavioral geography.

Pamela Williams is co-founder, creative director and partner of Williams and House, a strategic communications practice, which is best known nationally for its results-focused work in the graphic arts industry. The company is renowned for its expertise in strategic planning, media relations and relationship marketing and has developed, launched and managed brands as well as created and implemented dozens of seamless, multi-faceted marketing communications programs for leading brands and associations. Williams’s accumulated knowledge of the design and publishing industry, coupled with her experience of how to effectively market to it, is a unique combination that has been praised by clients.

Williams has been an AIGA member for more than a decade and has done a great deal to assist with programming both by managing and supporting dozens of AIGA events all around the country. She has authored articles in Communication Arts, STEP inside design, HOW, Graphis, Critique and Graphic Design: USA and has also published the book Breaking into Product Design, as well as authoring dozens of design related case studies and stories.