The winners of the 2022 IDSA Awards were revealed live on September 14, 2022, as part of IDSA’s annual International Design Conference (IDC)® in Seattle, WA.
The awards ceremony, held in person at Benaroya Hall and livestreamed to a virtual audience, was hosted by ClayVon Lowe, IDSA, At-Large Director of Awards on IDSA’s Board of Directors and Chair of IDSA’s Awards Committee.
Please join us in congratulating the following members of our design community for their dedication, contributions, and excellence.
The 2022 IDSA Award recipients are:
IDSA’s Academy of Fellows
Peter Haythornthwaite, FIDSA
Individual Achievement Award
Lorraine Justice, PhD, FIDSA
Bruce Hannah, L/IDSA
Special Achievement Award
Brett Lovelady, IDSA and Astro Studios
Education Award
Sébastien Proulx, PhD, IDSA
Young Educator Award
Aziza Cyamani, IDSA
Academy of Fellows
Peter Haythornthwaite, FIDSA
Peter Haythornthwaite Design
The first New Zealander to be made a Fellow of IDSA was Joseph Sinel, FIDSA, in 1965. Sinel worked in California and was reportedly the first person to set up a consultancy using the words Industrial Designer. In 2022, the Society is proud to invite another industrial design pioneer from New Zealand to join the Academy of Fellows.
For nearly 50 years, Peter Haythornthwaite has shared about the value of industrial design and design-led enterprise on an international scale. An IDSA member since 1978, Haythornthwaite is known for raising the bar of design excellence and bringing creative thinking to disciplines across the United States, Australia, and his home country of New Zealand.
He began his design studies in 1962 at the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland. In 1965, a design educator from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Edward J. Zagorski, FIDSA, came to Elam as a Fulbright Scholar. Zagorski inspired Haythornthwaite to pursue a master’s in industrial design at the University of Illinois. After three years in Illinois, Haythornthwaite worked in California. Then, Niels Different, FIDSA, hired him to work at Henry Dreyfuss Associates (HDA), led by Henry Dreyfuss, FIDSA, in New York City.
In 1971, Haythornthwaite returned to New Zealand to teach at the University of Auckland while maintaining a private practice. By the late 1970s, he joined Charles W. Pelly, FIDSA, at DesignworksUSA in California; and by 1984, he formed Peter Haythornthwaite Design, a multidisciplinary design consultancy. He also channeled his passion for design education into serving as head of design at the University of Auckland and as an adjunct professor of design at Victoria University in Wellington, supporting students’ academic and early career successes.
“Along with being a wonderful human being, I have never met anyone who was so dedicated to our profession,” says Raymond Carter, IDSA, of Haythornthwaite, a colleague at both HDA and DesignworksUSA. “His talent and joyful personality helped make our working environment a great place to be.”
Haythornthwaite’s inventive designs include the ar’ti-fakt-s line of office desk accessories, of which the Saturn Disc tape dispenser was a best-seller at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) shop in 1988. The LOMAK (Light Operated Mouse and Keyboard system), designed with two of Haythornthwaite’s sons, was the first New Zealand product in MoMA’s permanent collection. The LOMAK also won Gold at the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) in 2007.
“Peter contributed to a global Industrial Design explosion that is seldom seen in a single person’s work,” says Pelly, “and he is admired by all who have had the pleasure of knowing him.”
Haythornthwaite has generously invited IDSA associates to inform New Zealand businesses and government about the value of design, including when he was twice elected President of the Designers Institute of New Zealand (DINZ). An early proponent of design thinking, he co-established Equip Design Integration Consultants, which conceived and delivered the New Zealand government’s “Better by Design” program and the State of Victoria’s “Design to Business” initiative.
Michael Smythe, author of Design Generation: How Peter Haythornthwaite shaped New Zealand’s design-led enterprise (2018), notes that as early as 1981, Haythornthwaite was telling business delegates at a New Zealand Industrial Design Council conference that design needed to be repositioned from a discretionary add-on to the center of corporate culture.
As Smythe writes in the book, “Peter’s legacy includes a New Zealand design profession migrating from the back room to enlighten the board room—with many businesses transformed from product pushers to creators of continuously enhanced value.”
Haythornthwaite has received the 2003 John Britten Award from DINZ and a 2016 Royal Honour, “Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit,” for services to design, among many other accolades. And now, he is deservedly an IDSA Fellow.
Individual Achievement Award
Lorraine Justice, PhD, FIDSA
Dean Emerita & Professor of Industrial Design, Rochester Institute of Technology
Lorraine Justice, Dean Emerita and Professor of Industrial Design at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), has dedicated her career to promoting, strengthening, and supporting Industrial Design in the United States and around the world. Her design and research focus areas have included sustainability, technology, and more recently, design reasoning and bias.
Prior to joining the faculty at RIT, Justice served as Dean for seven years at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where she helped raise funding to bring the Zaha Hadid Innovation Tower to the PolyU campus to house the School of Design—a first in Hong Kong. Previously, she was the Director of the Industrial Design Program at Georgia Tech for six years; and before that, worked in industry and as a professor at The Ohio State University for over a decade.
Justice is a beloved IDSA member and Fellow. She received IDSA’s Education Award in 2008, served as President of IDSA’s Design Foundation from 2013-15, and was named among IDSA’s 50 Notable Members when the Society celebrated its first 50 years in 2015. She also was named one of the top 40 influential designers by ID magazine in 2006.
She has published two books with MIT Press: China’s Design Revolution (2012) and The Future of Design: Global Product Innovation for a Complex World (2019). Internationally recognized as a go-to resource on what’s next, she conducts workshops and speaks on the future of design and technology for corporations, governments, and non-profit organizations across the globe.
“Polymath Lorraine Justice is an extraordinary exemplar,” writes Patricia Moore, FIDSA. “She has mentored generations of students, resulting in global Designers delivering the highest quality of life for people of all ages and abilities, with equity. Tireless in her numerous roles for IDSA, Lorraine’s commitment to excellence has elevated our industry and its members.”
Bruce Hannah, L/IDSA
Professor Emeritus, Pratt Institute
Bruce Hannah is one of the great industrial designers and educators, as well as a forceful advocate for design, design education, and design students.
He graduated from Pratt Institute in 1963 and went on to teach at Pratt for more than 50 years, joining the Industrial Design Department as a professor in the early 1970s. He later became chair of the ID department and, after retiring in 2015, was named Professor Emeritus.
Hannah began collaborating on seating for Knoll in the late 1960s, and the year 1976 saw the creation of The Hannah Desk System, Takara Dental Chairs, Falcon Stacking Chairs, and the original patented Keyboard Support. In 1990, the Hannah Desk System was awarded “Design of the Decade” by IDSA.
Hannah’s other notable honors include being the first Designer in Residence at Cooper Hewitt – National Design Museum in 1992; receiving the Bronze Apple from the New York Chapter of IDSA in 1993, for the first national design conference on Universal Design; and earning the Federal Presidential Design Achievement Award in 2000 for the iconic “Unlimited by Design” exhibit he co-designed.
For his significant contributions to industrial design education, Hannah received IDSA’s Education Award in 1998 and the Rowena Reed Kostellow Award in 2003. Hannah helped to form the Rowena Reed Kostellow Fund at Pratt, to preserve and promote the pedagogy she developed through an annual awards program, scholarships for students, and the publication of Elements by Design.
Hannah continues to make a difference—talking with students, giving lectures, starting a foundation to remember the work of William Katavolos, and creating a podcast, “Design Mysteries with Bruce Hannah.”
“He is certainly an important part of the history of Industrial Design, the teaching at Pratt Institute, and the industry as a whole,” says Yvette Chaparro, a former master’s student at Pratt and now Assistant Professor and Director of the MFA in Industrial Design program at Parsons School of Design. “His voice continues to be relevant to this day.”
Special Achievement Award
Brett Lovelady, IDSA and Astro Studios
Founder & Partner, Astro Studios
Brett Lovelady founded Astro Studios in 1994 to blend the value of design with technology and cultural insights. Since then, he has become one of America’s top design leaders, and his San Francisco-based studio has become an international powerhouse in industrial design by creating industry-leading products for the likes of Nike, Microsoft, HP, Herman Miller, Xbox, Shinola, and more.
Previously, Lovelady was VP of Design at frog, then VP of Design at Lunar—both in Silicon Valley—and become synonymous with design excellence in the Bay Area.
Astro and Lovelady have received numerous industry recognitions—including multiple IDEAs, the first IDSA Catalyst Award, and two BusinessWeek Design of the Decade awards. The studio also expanded beyond design in 2007 with Astro Gaming: the first high-performance video gaming equipment and lifestyle brand. The company was sold to Skullcandy in 2011 and is now a $200 million global Logitech brand.
In 2020, Astro Studios became part of PA Consulting, a global innovation and digital transformation company. Astro is the West Coast office of PA, focused on providing high performance design to improve all aspects of the human experience.
Lovelady continues to have a tremendous impact on the career success of designers through his guidance and mentorship, furthering his influence on the next generation of leaders.
“By developing a culture that attracts some of the world’s best talent and clients, Brett and Astro have helped reshape the design industry,” writes Scott Wilson, founder of MNML. “There is nobody better than Brett—to both work for and learn from—in the industry.”
Adds Spencer Nugent, a renowned designer who counts Lovelady as a mentor and friend: “Not only is he a good human, but he has been at the helm of a studio that has transformed the design profession and stayed true to itself as the times have changed and the profession has matured. Studios come and go, but Astro and Brett have stood the test of time.”
Education Award
Sébastien Proulx, PhD, IDSA
Associate Professor of Design, The Ohio State University
Sébastien Proulx is Associate Professor of Design, Coordinator for the Industrial Design major, and Co-Director of the DESIS Lab at The Ohio State University (OSU). He is widely admired as a hands-on teacher and motivator for his colleagues and students in support of responsible, inclusive, and future-oriented design education.
Proulx holds a PhD in Design and a Master of Applied Science in Design and Complexity from the University of Montreal. He completed postdoctoral studies in public health at the University of Montreal Public Health Research Center and a doctoral fellowship in political and moral sociology at the Paris School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences.
Before joining OSU, Proulx was an instructor at the University of Montreal’s School of Design for 12 years, teaching social service design and visual communication to industrial design students.
At OSU, Proulx’s collaboration with faculty and students resulted in the founding of the DESIS Lab, investigating design for social innovation and sustainability. He has proposed vertical design charrettes in the Industrial Design program to elevate students’ communication with each other and the industry. He also has been trailblazer in the department for securing an affordable learning grant that allows ID students to share their leftover prototyping materials, and for championing a racial equity fund to bring design justice work to his classroom.
“Dr. Proulx came to The Ohio State in 2017, at a time when he was the sole industrial design tenure track faculty,” says Mary Anne Beecher, PhD, IDSA, Professor of Design at OSU. “While working mostly alone for the better part of his first three years, he was able to catalyze the program’s evolution and bring people to support the establishment of a forward-thinking industrial design focus and extension of industrial design boundaries.”
“Sébastien is a dedicated design educator and design researcher who cares about his students and society,” says former colleague Hazal Gümüş Çiftçi, PhD, now Assistant Professor at Arizona State University. “His work ethic and passion for teaching are features that set him apart. He is accessible to his students, and he knows how to motivate and inspire.”
Young Educator Award
Aziza Cyamani, IDSA
Assistant Professor of Product Design, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Aziza Cyamani is Assistant Professor of Product Design in the department of Interior Design at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). For years, she has been a significant contributor to IDSA’s Women in Design and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives, while also speaking to the adaptation of design education through the difficult time of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cyamani is a multidisciplinary designer with specialized training in user-centered design, visual communication, product development, and sustainable systems. She received her master’s degrees in Industrial Design and Sustainable Environments from Iowa State University and has taught at Kansas State University and Iowa State University.
At UNL, she has proposed a comprehensive plan of curricular re-development to build a more robust Product Design minor, with enough curricular flexibility to include students earning degrees in several programs across campus. She has done this by identifying core learning outcomes, knowledge domains, and skill development as appropriate for students pursuing a minor with various degrees of competency, from beginner to advanced understanding.
Cyamani co-edited IDSA’s annual Education issue of INNOVATION magazine in 2021, developing and co-writing a series highlighting the diverse voices of academia on mainstream industrial design issues. Additionally, she co-emceed IDSA’s Education Symposium in 2020 and 2021 and served as an IDEA juror in 2021 and 2022.
This is all on top of Cyamani’s work at UNL, where she has successfully introduced and connected students to globally complex problems—such as sustainable agricultural practices in Africa—in ways that have rendered purposeful and innovative design solutions.
“Aziza has demonstrated a passion for and commitment to teaching excellence in the classroom and through co-curricular development,” says Lindsay Bahe, Associate Professor and Director of the Interior Design Program at UNL. “As a 17-year veteran educator, I have found Aziza’s ability to communicate and craft a disciplinary learning framework for a minor program to be remarkable.”
Says one of Cyamani’s former students, Lizeth Sustaita-Delgado, “Aziza cares deeply about empowering students and about the issues of diversity and inclusion that concern us…She is an important role model in my life as an industrial design student and as a person.”
All candidates who qualify for annual IDSA Awards are rigorously evaluated by IDSA’s Awards Committee and subsequently approved by IDSA’s Board of Directors before being presented with the recognition they have earned.
The 2022 IDSA Awards Committee is led by ClayVon Lowe, IDSA, with members Betsy Barnhart, IDSA, Shea Tillman, IDSA, Jasmine Kent, IDSA, Sheng-Hung Lee, IDSA, Nancy Perkins, FIDSA, and George McCain, FIDSA.