Courtesy of John Maeda

Curiosity Expert: John Maeda

President, Rhode Island School of Design

• Maeda Studio
• Adobe Museum Exhibition
• Forbes Essay
• To Digital Or Not To Digital
• Aspen Ideas Festival
• AIGA Presents
• RISD Idea
• Follow the Rhode Island School of Design on Facebook!
• Follow John Maeda on Twitter!

John Maeda is a world-renowned artist, graphic designer, computer scientist and educator whose career reflects his philosophy of humanizing technology. For more than a decade, he has worked to synthesize technology, education and the arts into a 21st-century model for creativity and innovation.

As president of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), a position he assumed in June 2008, Maeda champions the vital role artists and designers play in fueling the global demand for innovation. He sees RISD's emphasis on critical thinking and critical making – on making tangible objects by hand – as increasingly relevant in an overly digital world. As president, he is working to connect RISD to the political, economic, social and business spheres – areas where the untapped potential of artists and designers can make a difference. To ensure the broadest possible access to a RISD education, he has also made fundraising for scholarships a top priority.

Maeda's early work redefined the use of electronic media as a tool for expression by combining skilled computer programming with traditional artistic technique. This laid the groundwork for the interactive motion graphics that are prevalent on the web today. As a digital artist, Maeda has exhibited in well-received one-man shows in London, New York and Paris. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Cartier Foundation in Paris. He is a trustee of the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, a member of the TED Conference Brain Trust, an Advisory Board Member for PopTech, and on the Design Advisory Board for Proctor & Gamble. He has also designed advanced commercial projects for major corporations such as Cartier, Google, Philips, Reebok and Samsung, among others.

In 2008 Esquire magazine named Maeda one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century, and in 2010 he was called the "Steve Jobs of academia" by Forbes magazine. In 2001 he earned a National Design Award in the US; in 2002, the Mainichi Design Prize in Japan; and in 2005, the Raymond Loewy Foundation Prize in Germany. He was inducted into the New York Art Director's Club Hall of Fame in 2009, and has been announced as a recipient of the AIGA Medal in 2011.

A former professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Maeda taught media arts and sciences there for 12 years and served as associate director of research at the MIT Media Lab. He has published four books including The Laws of Simplicity, now translated into 14 languages. His new book with Becky Bermont, Redesigning Leadership, expands on his micro-posts on leadership and innovation as @johnmaeda on Twitter. Maeda has lectured widely, including at Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, the Royal College of Art, Stanford and UCLA; at the Centre Pompidou, Davos World Economic Forum, TED conferences and Walker Art Center; and for corporations such as Herman Miller, Samsung, Sony, Steelcase, Toshiba and Yahoo!.

A native of Seattle, WA, Maeda earned both a bachelor's and a master's degree in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT, followed by a PhD in Design Science from the University of Tsukuba Institute of Art and Design in Japan and an MBA from Arizona State University.