Natasha Jen was born in Taipei, Taiwan and studied graphic design at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where she received her BFA with Honors in 2002. She has worked at Base Design as a senior designer on fashion and brand identity projects, at 2×4, Inc. as an art director leading large-scale branding, exhibition, environmental and editorial projects, and at Stone Yamashita Partners as creative director. In July 2010, she established her own studio, Njenworks. She joined Pentagram’s New York office as partner in April 2012. Natasha’s practice has been notable for crossing media genres, drawing on references from a diverse range of cultural, historical, aesthetic, and technological sources. Her work encompasses brand identities, environmental design, multi-scale exhibitions, signage systems, print, motion and interactive graphics, created in collaborations with universities and professional organizations, museums and galleries, and retail and fashion brands.

Natasha’s session: Bacteria, A.I., and a Box
Thursday, May 9, 2019
Chicago
11:00 AM 11:45 AM

Packaging is essentially a “box” that contains something more important than the box itself. The box, once its graphic is removed, is a short-lived, mundane object without an identity, destined for the landfill. As designers, we struggle with the conundrum of a box: that our role is to give this box meaning while knowing the environmental problem it is going to produce. This talk will look at how we rethink the identity of boxes through 2 unusual design projects that give form to something formless: bacteria and A.I.