This year’s highly anticipated annual lecture features Berlin-based artist, author, and animator Christoph Niemann, whose work appears regularly on the covers of The New Yorker, National Geographic, and The New York Times Magazine. He is the author of numerous books, including Sunday Sketching (2016), WORDS (2016), Souvenir (2017), and the recently released Hopes and Dreams, about a trip to meet an artistic hero in Los Angeles. Niemann’s work has been featured in several exhibition retrospectives and was the subject of an episode of Abstract: The Art of Design, the popular original Netflix series.

R. Michael Hendrix is a partner and the Global Design Director for the interdisciplinary design firm IDEO. His new book, Two Beats Ahead, explores what musical minds teach us about innovation.