Founder, Karten Design
www.kartendesign.com
Judging Category: Equipment
Stuart Karten sees design and business as two innately intertwined disciplines. He founded product innovation consultancy Karten Design in 1984 with the goal of “Connecting Creativity and Commerce™,” creating emotional bonds between consumers and products to help companies build brands and revenue.
From his studio near Venice Beach in Los Angeles, CA, Stuart and his team of 25 designers, researchers and engineers have completed a diverse range of projects for Fortune 500 clients in the medical device, consumer electronics, transportation and housewares industries. Whether designing a life-saving defibrillator or fashion-inspired headphones, Stuart is inspired by people. Through in-depth research and analysis, he and his team get inside of customers’ heads to develop products that excite people and reflect an empathetic understanding of their needs.
Karten Design’s work has won more than 100 of design’s most important awards globally, including IDEA, red dot, Good Design and the Cooper-Hewitt People’s Design Award, and has been featured in exhibitions in the Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Fast Company magazine has named Karten Design one of America’s top five “Design Factories” in its annual Masters of Design issue.
Stuart is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. He worked for Gould Medical Products, Mattel, and Baxter Medical Products until founding Karten Design. He is the former chair of the Los Angeles chapter of the Industrial Designer Society of America and currently sits on the advisory board to the USC master’s program in Medical Device and Diagnostic Engineering. He has shared his perspectives on creativity and business across the nation, speaking for the IIT Design Research Conference, the Design Management Institute and the Product Development Management Association, and has recently judged the Medical Design Excellence Awards (MDEA) and Design Arts Utah exhibition.
