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True to tradition, Fresh Dialogue 23 will look at graphic design through the fresh eyes of three designers. In a user-centric world where Nike iD, Flickr and YouTube rule the roost, this trio has kept pace, designing not just for but with their audiences. Playing with the notion of designer as visual storyteller, they craft conversations where their viewers are suddenly participants. See how each of them has redefined that joyous, contentious relationship between design and its consumers in a variety of mediums: Stefan Bucher in his wildly popular Daily Monster series; Eric Rodenbeck in the Flickr mapping brainchild that is Mappr and live data visualizations at Digg Labs; and Katie Salen with Karaoke Ice, the traveling karaoke ice cream truck that took San Jose by storm. This lively dialogue will be moderated by Ze Frank, online impresario, stand-up comic, creator of "the show," and soon-to-go-Hollywood charmer. Join us for a stimulating and entertaining forum on the changing role of the designer in the era of constant feedback.

Moderator:

Ze Frank
the show
zefrank.com
Ze Frank is an online performance artist, composer, humorist and public speaker. In 2001, Ze created an online birthday invitation called "How To Dance Properly" and sent it to seventeen of his closest friends. Forwarded wildly, the invitation soon generated millions of hits and over 100 gigabytes of daily web traffic to Ze's personal website. His site has grown to include interactive group projects, short films, animations, and video games. Ze won a 2002 Webby Award for Best Personal Website and was featured in Time magazine's "50 Coolest Websites" in 2005. Ze debuted onstage at the Gel Conference in 2003, and spoke at the TED Conference in 2004 and 2005. In March of 2006, Frank launched a daily video blog known simply as "the show with zefrank." Each tightly-edited, three-to-five minute episode combined Daily Show-style commentary on world events with songs, observations, and occasional games or challenges for his viewers to participate in. "the show" has quickly became the most popular portion of his site. Ze has also served as an adjunct professor at New York University, Parsons The New School For Design and SUNY Purchase.

Panelists:

Stefan G. Bucher
Daily Monster
344 Design
Stefan G. Bucher is the man behind 344design.com, store344.com, and dailymonster.com. He is the author and designer of All Access—The Making of Thirty Extraordinary Graphic Designers His illustrated column "ink & circumstance" appears in the pages of STEP Inside Design Magazine. These days he is creating gratuitously ambitious work for David Hockney, Tarsem, and the general manager of Per Se. Shortly after midnight on November 9th, 2006 he filmed himself blowing some ink on a piece of paper and making it into a monster and linked the result to his blog. For the next 99 days, he posted a new monster every night and was shocked to find himself the seed crystal for a brilliant community of monster obsessives that used his drawings as an excuse to tell stories. With the original 100 monsters done, he opened up the site to his visitors, inviting them to submit their own creature drawings based on a weekly Open Source Ink Blot.

Eric Rodenbeck
Stamen Design
Founder and creative director of Stamen Design, Eric Rodenbeck is a 10-year veteran of the interactive design field. His projects have focused on exploring the outer limits of online media and live information visualization. Eric led the interactive storytelling and data-driven narrative effort at Quokka Sports, illustrated and designed at Wired and Wired Books, and was a co-founder of the design collective Umwow. He has lectured and spoken at Yale University, the University of Southern California, numerous O'Reilly technology conferences, Esther Dyson's PC Forum, and South by Southwest, among others. Eric studied architecture at Cooper Union and received a B.A. in the History and Philosophy of Technology from The New School for Social Research.

Katie Salen
Gamelab Institute of Play
As a game designer, writer, and design educator, Katie Salen has worked on a range of projects for clients including Microsoft, SIGGRAPH, the Hewlett Foundation, XMediaLab, the Design Institute, gameLab, and mememe Productions. She co-authored Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals and The Game Design Reader. She is currently working on several MacArthur Foundation-funded projects that focus on digital media, games, and learning, including the design of a new public high school themed around games. She was a contributing writer for RES magazine, and worked as an animator on Richard Linklater's critically acclaimed animated feature Waking Life. Katie has curated programs at the Lincoln Center, Cinematexas, ZKM, Exploding Cinema, and the Walker Art Center on machinima. With collaborators Marina Zurkow and Nancy Nowacek she recently completed Karaoke Ice, a project featuring an ice cream truck outfitted for traveling karaoke that debuted at ISEA 2006 in San Jose.