In a conversation with Chee Pearlman, Karen Hibma Cronan and Michael Cronan discuss how they helped to change the focus of the Aspen Design Summit to serve the needs of designers today while continuing to respect the Aspen legacy. As advisory board members for the former International Design Conference at Aspen, the Cronans were invaluable to AIGA in transitioning it from “Conference” to “Summit.” In 2006, the Cronans did everything from recruiting speakers to donating the identity and graphics for the Summit.

Listen / 8:49 (10.1 MB)

About Karin Hibma Cronan and Michael Cronan
Karin Hibma Cronan is a partner in ::Cronan::, concentrating on incorporating smart design processes and finding “the big idea” inherent in every client’s projects. Since 1980, she has managed business relationships with clients Levi Strauss & Co, Estee Lauder, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and many Silicon Valley clients. Hibma also founded and is the president of Cronan Artefact, a product development, manufacturing and marketing company, incorporated in 1991 to market the Walking Man line of apparel designed by Michael Cronan and Hibma, for which they won I.D.'s Gold Award and an honorable mention from the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

Hibma focuses on naming and strategic brand identities, deep thinking for and with clients, managing client relationships, and consulting with IDE, an international organization concentrating on ending rural poverty. She lives in Berkeley, California and serves on the advisory council of the International Design Conference in Aspen.

As a partner in ::Cronan::, Michael Cronan creates strategic brand identities, names and design for some of today's most successful new products and companies, including Amazon, Apple, Estee Lauder, Levi Strauss & Co., SFMOMA, TiVo, the United States Postal Service and Williams-Sonoma. The recipient of numerous awards from leading national and international design organizations and publications, Cronan was featured in "Pacific Wave, California Graphic Design" at Museo Fortuny in Venice, Italy in 1989 and "In the Public Eye," the first graphic design exhibition at SFMOMA in 1993, and his work is represented in the permanent collections of the Denver Art Museum, the Library of Congress, SFMOMA and London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

A native of San Francisco, Cronan now lives in Berkeley, California, where he is a founding member and former president of AIGA's San Francisco chapter. Cronan serves on the advisory council of the International Design Conference in Aspen and is also a painter.

About Chee Pearlman
Chee Pearlman is a New York-based journalist, conference director and curator. She has covered design topics for more than 20 years as a contributor to Newsweek, The New York Times, Travel + Leisure, Wired, Popular Science, and as the former editor-in-chief of I.D. Magazine, which received five National Magazine Awards under her direction. Chee was the curator of the acclaimed "Voting Booth Project" exhibition at the Parsons School of Design, and founded and chaired the Chrysler Design Awards for its ten-year duration. She is the program director for the forthcoming "Speed of Light" conference at the Museum of Arts and Design and the biannual Art Center Design Conference in Los Angeles.

About the music
Music provided for podcAspen by the PodShow Podsafe Music Network.

"It's A Snap" by F11