Katsumi Asaba

President of Kuwasawa Design School

Born in 1940, Katsumi Asaba is a renowned, multi-award winning Japanese designer and a master calligrapher based in Tokyo. After graduating from Kuwasawa Design School and working for Light Publicity Inc., he founded Katsumi Asaba Design Studio in 1975. Since then he has taken an active role at the forefront of Japanese design industry. Many of his creations as an art director have made a lasting mark in the history of Japanese advertising design. Representative works include landmark ads for Seibu department store, Suntory, and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, and Logo design for HOMME PLISSÉ ISSEY MIYAKE. He has received numerous awards including the Japan Advertising Artists Club Special Prize, Tokyo Type Directors Club Award, Yusaku Kamekura Award, Japan Academy Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction, Medal with Purple Ribbon, Tokyo Art Directors Club Grand Prix for “Asaba’s Diary” and the space design for the exhibition “Traces of the Prayer” held in 2008 at 21_21 Design Sight, and Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette in 2013. He is chairman of the Tokyo Type Directors Club, committee member of the Tokyo Art Directors Club and JAGDA (Japan Graphic Designers Association), Japan representative in the Alliance Graphique Internationale, 10^th  successive director of Kuwasawa Design School, and visiting professor at Tokyo Zokei University and Kyoto Seika University. Asaba has a particular interest in the rich cultural heritage of writing in Asia and in exploring the relationships between written and visual expression. He also holds the title of sixth degree master in table tennis (Japan Table Tennis Association).

Markus Weisbeck

Professor at Bauhaus University Weimar

Born in 1965, Markus Weisbeck is a German graphic designer, art director, who lives and works in Weimar, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin. He founded the graphic studio Surface Gesellschaft für Gestaltung mbH in 2000. After several international visiting professorships, he teaches since 2011 as a professor of graphic design at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. He has served as a judge for international design competitions and is a freelance writer for the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” and “Frieze and Form” design columns. He is a member of AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale) since 2013. He established the “The Space for Visual Research” at Bauhaus University in Weimar in 2013. In the same year, he curated the “77 Proposals” exhibition at the Milan Expo and Hessen Marmaris. His clients included: MMK Museum of Modern Art, Forsythe, Luma Arles, Fogo Island Art Center, 11^th Kassel Documenta, Zumtobel Corporate Identity, and Jewish Museum Frankfurt am Main, German Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 7^th Sao Paulo International Architecture Biennale, Manifesta 7, etc.

Henning Wagenbreth

Professor at Berlin University of the Arts

Born in Germany in 1962, Henning Wagenbreth lives in Berlin, Paris and San Francisco. He is a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts, and a well-known illustrator. He studied graphic design at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee in East Berlin from 1982-1987. He worked as a freelance graphic designer after graduation. He believes that manual and industrial printing techniques are important parts of his design process. He creates illustrations for many books, posters, newspapers and magazines; sizes vary from stamps to giant posters. Apart from commissioned jobs, he also has his own independent art projects.

Jumping He

Director of Hesign

Jumping He was born in 1973, China. He is now living in Berlin, working as a graphic designer, professor and publisher. He studied at the China Academy of Art, Meisterschule of Fine Arts in Berlin University of Arts and had his PhD. of cultural history in Free University of Berlin. He taught at Berlin University of the Arts, employed as a guest professor by Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He is now the professor and doctoral supervisor in China Academy of Arts. He used to work as an International Education Director of AGI. Founder of Design Summer.

Mann Lao

Founder of Chiii Design and Y Show / Creative Director of Chiii Design Ltd.

A Macau leading representative of the new generation has served as the jury and committee for many international design competitions in Japan, Taiwan, Macau and China. Founded Chiii Design with his partner, Nono, Leong Chi Hang in the year 2013, which has been successfully established into an internationally renowned design team with projects involving with more than 25 cities around the world, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Switzerland, Canada, Portugal, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Macau and China.

The masterpieces of Mann have not only invited to be presented worldwide but also have won more than 200 awards in exhibitions of over 10 countries and regions, including the United States ONESHOW Award; the United States GRAPHIS; Germany IF Design Award; German Design Award; France Festival De L’affiche et du Graphisme; Russia GoldenBee; Finland Lahti Poster Triennial; Italy ADesign Award; Mexico International Poster Biennia; Bolivia BICeBe; Hong Kong International Poster Triennial; Taipei Design Award; Hong Kong Designers Association’s Global Design Competition; The DFA Design for Asia Awards in Hong Kong; Hong Kong Commercial Printing Award; GDC—Graphic Design in China; the China International Poster Biennial and the Macau Design Biennial. Partial designs were collected by several global museums.

Design is from life and it serves to the society. Throughout his effort and networking, he organized the first “Y Show” Macau art graduates joint exhibition in 2016 and the “Y Class” creative design course, providing a direct channel for the creative culture and the commercial business from local, neighboring areas and overseas, pushing the design education forward and cultivate creative talents for the society.

Sabrina Ho

President of Chiu Yeng Cultural and Creative Industry Association / Founder of Y Show

Sabrina Ho Chiu Yeng had lived and studied in the United Kingdom for many years; she is a young entrepreneur and holds a Bachelor of Art Degree from the University of Hong Kong. She is the Founder and the Managing Director of Chiu Yeng Culture, the Director and Chief Executive Officer of Poly Auction Macau Limited and at the same time as a strategic partner of UNESCO. She is the Project Manager of the upcoming hotels that are to be built in Macau – the Palazzo Versace and Karl Lagerfeld Hotel, while managing and operating two boutique hotels of the family business in Hong Kong and Macau. She actively organises various types of arts and cultural activities, and aims to promote the development of Asian arts and culture, at the same time developing young artists from different sectors.

She believes that culture transcends generations and national borders, and brings inspiration and hope. She is keen to promoting the integration of arts into daily life and look forward to further collaborations to contribute to the broader community to strengthen the foundation of urban culture, and promote arts and cultural development.

She has a great influence in the Chinese art market and has been ranked number 17 on the 2015 Top 100 Global Chinese Art Market Man by Yi Dan China and Art Nova 2015 by Art Power 100. In April 2016, she has been invited to be one of the featured speakers at the 19th Annual Harvard China Forum and at the same month, she was named as one of the potential Asia’s Power Businesswomen in the year to come in Forbes Asia.