STEFAN G. BUCHER
Stefan G. Bucher is a good egg. He is the man behind 344 Design and the author and designer of All Access—The Making of Thirty Extraordinary Graphic Designers (Quayside Publishing Group). He designed the American Photography 17 annual for which he received a D&AD Silver Award for Most Outstanding Complete Book Design. In September of 2004 the Art Directors Club (New York) selected him as one of 35 outstanding creatives age 30 and under for their biennial Young Guns exhibit. These days he is creating gratuitously ambitious work for clients as diverse as blue chip art galleries, cappuccino entrepreneurs and Indian movie directors. He is a frequent and passionate speaker on the subjects of life, love and graphic design. His illustrated column Ink & Circumstance appears in the pages of this magazine (29 in this issue). Every night he films himself drawing a new monster that he posts at the aptly titled dailymonster.com. All the while he is busy preparing the next phase of the 344 Invasion.

BART CROSBY
Bart Crosby is president of Crosby Associates, Chicago-based specialists in the planning and design of organizational, product, event and initiative identification and branding programs. The company’s clients include multinational corporations, educational institutions, professional associations, financial services firms, government agencies and entrepreneurs. His work has been recognized by nearly every professional design organization, and he’s been featured in many national and international design and business publications. Crosby has been executive vice president and a director of AIGA and is a founding member and past president of AIGA Chicago. In 2002 he was made a fellow of the Chicago Chapter, and in 2005 he was awarded the AIGA Medal in recognition of exceptional achievements and contributions to the field of graphic design. He is also a member of the Arts Club of Chicago and the Alliance Graphique Internationale. A graduate of the American Academy of Art, he is a frequent lecturer at conferences and universities and has served as adjunct associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

ROBYNNE RAYE
Since cofounding Modern Dog Design in 1987, Robynne Raye has continued to do work for entertainment and retail companies —both local and national —and counts poster and identity projects as some of her favorite work. She routinely ignores the boundaries between illustration, design and typography. Her clients include the NBA, Coca-Cola, Adobe Systems, Blue Q and Adidas. Her posters are represented in the permanent archives of the Library of Congress, Hong Kong Heritage Museum, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Museum Fur Kunst und Gewerbe, the Warsaw National Museum and the Cooper- Hewitt National Design Museum, among others. For more than 15 years she has lectured and taught workshops, both nationally and internationally. Currently she teaches upper level design courses at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. She has a 14-year-old Westie named Pete.

SAM SHELTON
Sam Shelton is a founding partner of KINETIK, a Washington, D.C., graphic design firm. He is a past AIGA National Board member as well as a past Board member and past president of the Washington, D.C., chapter of AIGA. He was recently presented with the AIGA Fellow award, recognizing significant contributions to raising the standards of excellence in practice and conduct within the design community. Shelton is an adjunct faculty member at the Corcoran Museum College of Art and Design and a member of the design curriculum advisory committee at the Alexandria campus of Northern Virginia Community College. He graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in Communication Arts and Design and recently completed the Advanced Leadership Program, “Business Perspectives for Design Leaders,” at Harvard Business School. KINETIK has been recognized in STEP inside design, Communication Arts, Graphis and Print, and has been honored by the national AIGA, the D.C. chapter of AIGA, the Type Directors Club, the Society of Publication Designers and the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington.

ARMIN VIT
Born and raised in Mexico City, Armin Vit is a graphic designer and writer now living in Brooklyn, New York. He has written for AIGA’s VOICE, Emigre, Eye, Creative Review, How and STEP magazines, among others. He is a former faculty member of Portfolio Center and currently teaches at the School of Visual Arts. He has lectured on topics ranging from typography to branding in locations ranging from San Diego to Berlin. He is cofounder of UnderConsideration. com, which runs the (in)famous Speak Up, The Design Encyclopedia, Brand New and Quipsologies. Currently he spends his daytime working at Pentagram. Feisty behind the keyboard, Vit remains timid at heart.