As creative director of Kym Abrams Design for over 25 years, Kym collaborates with the client and the design team, directing the development of integrated and creative solutions. Kym has been featured in Communications Arts magazine and received the first Woman of the Year award from Women in Design/Chicago. She has served as a board member of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and as advisor to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Design Department. She served as a judge for Communication Arts’ national Design Annual and is a frequent contributor to design publications. She and her staff have worked with market leaders to create, launch, and refresh effective brands. Kym holds a BFA from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.

Currently a full-time faculty member in the Department of Graphic Design at Virginia Commonwealth University, John DeMao, Jr. was previously Interim Director for VCU’s da Vinci Center for Product Innovation and Development, VCUArts Associate Dean for VCUArts-Qatar, and Chair of the Communication Arts and Design Department at VCU. As Chair, he directed studies in graphic and interactive information design, illustration, scientific and preparatory medical illustration, and digital and kinetic media, and in the graduate area of visual communications. He has a design background in information analysis/organization, publication planning/production and design methodology. Working with local, regional, and national clients, his experience includes private sector, public, and academic projects in both design and administrative capacities. He was the Southeast Regional Representative on the governing board of the Graphic Design Education Association, the only national organization for graphic design educators, and was one of the original seven steering committee members who founded the organization.

Chris Murray has worked as a 3D artist and producer for more than 20 years. He is currently employed at Autodesk Media and Entertainment working in 3dsMax, CAT, Composite, and Matchmover. He has also worked at University of Central Florida in the FIEA Administration and Managerial Departments.

As Principal at Hoogstraten Photography, Sharon has specialized in educational and trade publishing. Previously she taught at the University of Illinois (UIC). Sharon has won many awards for her work in broadcast design: two Emmy awards for Individual Achievement in Graphic Design, Gold and Silver Broadcast Design Association awards, and as the producer of several animated short films, she won a Birmingham Children’s Film Festival award. Sharon’s clients have included McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt Brace, Scott Foresman, Contemporary Books, National Geographic and the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Fred Daunno attended Ringling College of Art and Design, majoring in Advertising, Design, and Illustration. He has over 30 years of experience in all areas of management, design, illustration, art, and production, most notably as the Creative Director/Art Director for Tupperware Brands Corporation in Orlando, Florida. Under his own Daunno Studio, he has worked with clients such as AAA, Boys and Girls Clubs of America, General Mills Corp., Saturday Evening Post, and many others.

A graduate of both Louisiana State University and IIT Institute of Design, Joe Dizney has worked as Design Director at The Wall Street Journal and Smart Money. He has also worked as a Graphic Designer/Art Director at The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Country Music Magazine, Fortune, and The American Lawyer. Joe currently works as as High-Performance Artist at Large and as an Adjunct Professor for Design Development at Parsons.

Fred Murrell has been a design consultant, design manager, creative director and educator for over 20 years, providing design/strategy solutions that have helped shape many leading companies. He previously worked for global consultant Sapient as Vice President of Experience Design, where he built design communities, design systems, and design initiatives in Germany, Japan, Australia, India, and the United States. Fred has also held the position of Director of Design Worldwide at Texas Instruments, Corning Incorporated, and Tenet Healthcare, where he designed and implemented integrated communications programs, interactive web experiences, information design environments, and product design initiatives.

Glen Sheehan is Group Creative Director at T3, one of the top advertising and marketing firms in the country with offices in Austin, Texas, New York, and San Francisco. Glen has over 12 years of award-winning branding and digital expertise, and as Group Creative Director he leads the Dell creative team, and serves as a creative resource across other agency accounts.  

Prior to joining T3, Glen was Creative Director at Young & Rubicam Brands/Wunderman in Irvine, California, and before that, Executive Creative Director at AKQA in San Francisco – working for clients such as Microsoft (for the Xbox 360), MSN, Hilton, Mattel, Land Rover, Nike, Intel and Visa.

In addition to developing and creating memorable client work, he shares his knowledge with the advertising industry as a speaker and an awards judge.  He’s spoken to groups and at conferences including AAAA’s, ad:tech, and iMedia Brand Summit, and has judged for such awards programs as CLIO, WebAwards, Cannes,  and One Show.

Upon graduating from Full Sail in 1999, Jayson Whitmore began his career at Pittard Sullivan in Los Angeles. Beginning as a Junior Designer/Animator, Whitmore was involved in numerous branding packages for clients including ABC, ESPN, DirecTV, FX and TiVo.

Jayson Whitmore is now a freelance motion graphics artist working within the television, film, and fine art worlds. He currently co-owns his own production studio, Royale, and his work has included network packaging, main titles, music videos, as well as exhibition art. Jayson has also completed several motion graphics pieces for Madonna’s “Re-Invention” Tour, a series of network branding spots for TV-LAND, as well as national television spots for McDonald’s, Discovery Channel, Comedy Central, and Apple’s iPod Nano.

For more than 35 years, Roger Black has been developing ways to communicate content more effectively, lending his design skills to magazines like Rolling Stone, newspapers such as The New York Times, and websites like Bloomberg.com. His teams have redesigned Reader’s Digest, Esquire, The Nation (Bangkok), and The Los Angeles Times. His most recent projects include a redesign for the Washington Post newspaper and the news website for MIT.

Grant Salisbury is the Production Director of GFX in Orlando, FL, where he specializes in design for various types of marketing. This includes broadcast motion graphics, 3D visualization, web design, print/brochure design, and DVD development. Grant is a graduate of the University of Central Florida where he received a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and Finance. Grant is also a graduate of Full Sail University, where he received an Associate of Science degree in Digital Media. In his professional career, Grant has also worked as a visual effects editor for Promo Only, and was the Motion Graphics Lead at The Animation Mill.

With a background in fine art, world music, and carpentry, Kim Alpert brings an attention to detail and diverse style to her work. After graduating from Full Sail’s Digital Media program in 2003, she returned to her hometown of Chicago, where she’s worked in house for companies like Leo Burnett and Blue Man Group, as well as freelance for Motorola, 8ball Films, and Draft World Wide. Her broadcast design has also been seen on BET, WGN, Lifetime, and a variety of other channels.

Currently, Kim is the Creative Director for Sparkfactor, a boutique agency in Chicago, and continues to be an active member of both the art and advertising community. She has acted as the Film and Video Curator for Chicago’s Around the Coyote Festival since 2003. She has premiered her independent work at this festival, as well as the Facets, Movieside, and Frameline festivals. Kim’s installations have also been part of several gallery exhibitions, and was most recently featured as part of Looptopia – with 40-foot tall display on the side of a prominent building in downtown Chicago.

Federico Unda studied at the Anahuac University in Mexico City, where he received his degree in Communications in 1994. In 1998 he sold FK Productions, a company he started when he was 15, and moved to Winter Park, Florida to attend Full Sail’s Digital Media program.

After graduating with his Associate’s degree Federico moved back to Mexico, where he worked at Alo.com as director of production, before going on to become a part of the founding team, and Post Production Vice President, of Anima Estudios.

Anima Estudios, is a pioneering production house in the Latin America animation industry. In 2003 their project Magos y Gigantes became the first full-digital Latin American film, and was released by 20th Century Fox. Anima Estudios has also marketed an animation system that allows for on-air broadcast and real time production of animated content.