Pleased to Present:

Crackerjack Copywriter, Word Wonk, Speaker & Author of Unflubbify Your Writing // Shiny Red Copy

Sara has been working with designers since the days when they ordered typography, made mechanicals, and used a stat camera. Children, X-Acto knives were involved.

After a long stint in a Boston advertising agency and an even longer one in the award-winning creative department at Publix Super Markets, Sara began working full-time in her one-woman copywriting shop, Shiny Red Copy, in 2016. Since then, she’s gotten to help all sorts of clients with branding and advertising—B2C, B2B, and beyond. Whether she's promoting software or skincare, whether she's creating product packaging or ad campaigns, Sara delights in collaborating with designers to come up with strong concepts and effective work.

A passionate logophile (word lover) and typophile (lover of typography and printed matter), Sara regularly attends a type meetup with intimidatingly accomplished typography designers, subscribes to Brand New and BLAG (a magazine dedicated to sign painting), and, of course, is a member of AIGA. She’s written for the CreativePro Network and spoken at CreativePro Week and the CreativePro Design + Marketing Summit. Her enthusiasm for design has taken her to three Brand New conferences in the last year.

She can’t wait to see what Alaska’s designers have been creating lately.

Partner, Creative // IKM – B2B branding without boundaries. Reimagine your brand.

Ian Kaine MacGregor is a partner at IKM, a leading B2B branding agency in the DC Metro area. As an award-winning creative professional, Ian has extensive expertise in design, branding, messaging, and marketing across various industries, including technology, eCommerce, fashion, and entertainment.

Ian has led successful rebrands for Appian, Kauffman Foundation, Linux Foundation, OpenText, and Zippo. His contributions also include teaching and mentoring at Boston University, founding the Hitcher social platform and application suite, and developing a proprietary social media marketing strategy used by Fortune 500 companies.

Recognized as an authority in branding, design, and social communications technology, Ian’s career is marked by innovation and leadership. He continues to make significant contributions to industry practices.

Cross-Cultural Perspective in Creative Direction, Design Leadership, & Education //

Maximo Creative Communications

Máximo Escobedo is accomplished designer with nearly 30 years of professional experience. He is a graduate of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena with a degree in Graphics and Packaging Design. His work has received numerous awards and recognition from local and national organizations.

After practicing the design trade at ever increasing levels of responsibility and leadership at large corporations, small boutique design studios, and all in between, his most recent in-house role was at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, CA. There he helped form and  led a group of talented creative professionals to produce award-winning design work, including the magazine, InsideSalk.

Máximo currently leads Maximo Creative Communications, a San Diego-based, full-service, creative studio that provides branding, design and communications solutions for print, event, packaging, environment and new media projects for a wide variety of clients, including major brands like Hewlett-Packard, Qualcomm, Kinko’s, Harcourt Publishing, and Pony International.

He has extensive experience serving and consulting for organizations in the education and non-profit sector such as The Chicano Federation, Access to Independence, Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Legal Aid Society, AVID Center and the East Region Adult Education Consortium. He has led creative workshops and taught at several local colleges and universities. He currently teaches design courses at UC San Diego Extended Studies and MiraCosta College.

Over the past two decades he has held leadership and board positions with the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) San Diego Tijuana chapter and currently serves as Vice President - Cross Border Relations.

Growing up in both Tijuana and San Diego, Máximo gained a unique appreciation and understanding of this binational community. With this distinct background and his broad professional experience, Máximo was selected to develop the branding for San Diego Tijuana’s designation as World Design Capital 2024 which highlights and celebrates the design and innovation success of this prolific binational region. In his role as creative lead for WDC 2024 Maximo has maintained a regular schedule of presentations and speaking engagements to broad constituencies on both side of the border.

Designer, Cultural Critic, Writer, Letterpress Printer // MATTER

Rick Griffith is an award-winning designer, conference organizer, writer, and artist. He is the founder and partner at the studio MATTER, an ambidextrous design consultancy that designs policy, programs, experiences, printed things, and products. MATTER also runs a letterpress community printshop for the public good, and a bookstore/venue for revolutionaries, designers, and other thinking persons, he works mostly out of Denver, Colorado.