2025 Speakers
Staircase to Design Heaven
Climbing the ladder of value in design practice.
In his talk, Marc Català will explore the value of design depending on the type of services and cultural assumptions ascribed to design practice. With real case studies, and learnings from the management of projects big and small, Català will explain the journey that has transformed Mucho into an influential branding agency operating throughout the world.
About Marc
Marc is founding partner and creative director at Mucho, a brand design agency. He started Mucho with fellow AGI member Pablo Juncadella in 2003. The agency incorporates its original independent studio mentality to a strategic approach to branding. This has led Mucho to the forefront of brand design in the international scene. Project highlights include defining multinational brands such Aeromexico, lifestyle brands such as Pacha and institutions such as Toulouse School of Economics.
Marc Català is also a teacher and keynote speaker offering conferences worldwide, and is director of the Mucho Programme, an executive brand design education course at Eina, Barcelona School of Design. He has also developed research projects such as the Visual Thinking Research Project. Català is a member of AGI, Alliance Graphic Internationalle.
Creative Courage & Second Nature
“I love the theme of this years DLC ‘Creative Courage’ it immediately struck a chord with me in my own career journey”
The path to second nature is about transforming external guidance into creative courage & confidence. It starts with listening and refining, gradually shifting from relying on others to trusting your own instincts. This process builds the clarity and courage to act decisively, empowering your ability to explore new ideas and solve challenges creatively.
Along the way, you develop the confidence to fail, embracing mistakes as essential steps in the pursuit of creativity and innovation. By balancing external input with your inner voice, you cultivate the freedom to express yourself authentically, unlocking a steady flow of confidence that becomes your second nature.
Leading with empathy, you pass this learning on, inspiring others to trust their instincts and embrace their own creative growth. This approach creates a culture where teams feel empowered to thrive and flourish. Leading with empathy is one of the most powerful things you can do as a leader.
About Orlagh
Orlagh is a seasoned design leader with an exceptional career in strategic consumer brand and experiential design. She has cultivated her expertise at some of the world’s most renowned branding agencies and design studios. In her current role as Pepsi Global Design Director at PepsiCo International Beverages, Orlagh oversees the creative vision for Pepsi, the company’s flagship brand.
A graduate of IADT’s Visual Communication programme, Orlagh earned a Master’s degree with distinction in Communication Design from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Her work has been widely recognised in the industry, winning awards and nominations for excellence in commercial design. Her personal projects have also been featured in ‘Book Design’ published by Laurence King.
Beyond her professional accomplishments, Orlagh is committed to nurturing the next generation of creative talent. She mentors final-year Communication Design students, sharing her experience and insights to inspire and guide their creative journeys.
Jennie C. Stephens
Professor of Climate Justice, ICARUS Climate Research Centre, Maynooth University
Courage, Creativity and Transformative Climate Justice
Jennie will make the case for the urgent need for a climate justice paradigm shift in our collective thinking about transformative societal change. Instead of thinking about the climate crisis as a problem that needs to be fixed with individual actions, she will discuss how, from a climate justice lens, the climate crisis is a symptom of a much larger problem that requires structural and systemic change.
She will discuss how the design community can best address these issues as leaders of influence, working creatives and citizens. In her remarks, she seeks to inspire and empower as she explores the role of imagination and disruption in transformative change.
About Jennie
Jennie is a climate justice scholar, activist and author who is committed to empowering the courage and creativity needed to catalyse transformative change towards a more healthy, just and peaceful future for all. She has recently moved back to Ireland from the United States and she believes that Ireland is uniquely positioned for global climate justice leadership.
Jennie has been working on climate issues for over 30 years – since before the first of the COP international climate negotiations. In her own career she has moved from thinking more about science and technology to now focusing more on policy change to address the worsening economic injustices of the climate crisis and the devastating climate impacts of concentrated wealth and power.
Mike Schnaidt
Creative Director of Fast Company, Author of ‘Creative Endurance’, Professor at School of Visual Arts, Fast Company
Pace Yourself
A designer's superpower is pacing: the art of sequencing visuals to craft a compelling story. What if you apply those same design principles to your career?
Schnaidt shares insights from his time as a creative director, a professor, and a writer—giving you the creative courage to build a purposeful career.
About Mike
Mike is a creative director, author and educator. Currently the creative director of Fast Company, Schnaidt leads a team of art directors and photo editors who create visuals for the brand. Previously, he was creative director of Men’s Health and held senior roles at Popular Science, Esquire, and Entertainment Weekly. His design work has been recognised by Art Directors Club, Society of Publication Designers, and Type Directors Club.
Creative Endurance is Schnaidt’s first book—a practical guide for navigating obstacles and finding the creative courage to achieve your biggest goals. Design luminaries have praised the book, with Steven Heller noting that “Schnaidt has ingeniously found strategies to make creative performance productive,” and Paula Scher describing it as “beautifully designed.”
He holds an M.S. in Communication Design from Pratt Institute. Currently, he teaches illustration at School of Visual Arts in New York City, and has also taught at Kean University and University of the Arts. Schnaidt is the former president of the Society of Publication Designers, and has delivered talks on design and creativity for NYU, DesignThinkers, and Adobe.
Resilience, bravery and a little bit of magic: shaping the future at Household
A courageous mindset involves being willing to take risks, advocate for one's beliefs, challenge the status quo and persevere in the face of adversity.
Resilience, the ability to face fear and to adapt to change are critical qualities for an entrepreneur. Taking risks and not being intimidated by what they don't know has given Household fire in their bellies and enabled them to do things differently over the past twenty years.
Julie will talk about what creative courage has meant at Household, from the way they set up business to the courage and bravery of their clients, the courage of their brilliant people to speak up and what this culture of creative courage means for the future.
About Julie
Julie is a leading figure in modern Retail, Hospitality and Entertainment design with over 30 years of expertise and a roster of loyal clients. As co-founder of Household (which celebrates its 21st year this year), Julie has been instrumental in creating transformative experiences for the brands across the globe.
With offices in London, New York and Los Angeles, Household is an award-winning creative agency specialising in brand and experience design. Notable clients include Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix, Diptyque, Musgrave and Target.
During her career she has built a reputation for being a strategic partner to clients, maintaining highly effective client relationships through being a pragmatic, entrepreneurial-oriented leader.
Julie contributes regularly to publications, design awards judging, the BBC news, seminars and panel discussions on a wide range of topics relating to brand, retail and hospitality.
Applied Design Leadership: the changing role of design in tech
The rise of AI is reshaping the tech industry dramatically, redefining the role of the designer and the design leader. We are still right in the middle of this change, so it's worth taking stock of where we're going.
This talk takes a cold, hard look at the shifting roles and value systems around design in tech, and how leaders might adapt to this new era.
About Emmet
Emmet is a digital product designer and leads the Product Design team at Intercom. Intercom is the only complete AI-first customer service platform, enhancing the customer experience, improving operational efficiency, and scaling businesses.
Emmet has grown the team from 4 to 50+ designers and design leaders, shaped the processes and culture through several stages of maturity, worked directly on company-level strategy and vision and overseen the design of everything shipped in that time.
He believes that designers should iterate on how they work as much as they iterate on their work itself. He has blogged and spoken regularly about product and design.
Previously, Emmet was a senior user experience designer at Google where he co-founded and designed Android Wear and designed Google Flights. He has an MA in Digital Art and Technology from the University of Plymouth and a BA in Information Technology from the University of Galway.
What it takes to create a breakthrough product in the medical sector
The thumb base joint is one of the most remarkably complex but beautifully elegant joints in the human body. It's also the third most common joint affected by arthritis. Thumb base joint arthritis has been shown to be as debilitating as hip and knee arthritis.
Gerry will tell the story of how it takes a tiny and diverse team to identify an unmet clinical need and then to have the courage and perseverance to create and develop a viable solution. Taking us from Stanford to Galway and from Cork to Leuven he will explain why Europe and Ireland in particular, via the BioInnovate process at NUIG, is the best incubation environment for world class medical device start-ups.
He will explore how observation and innocent inquiry is just as important as specialist expertise, and how a small in-house team best compliments each other and the degree of intensity, passion and endurance required to create a truly world class medical innovation.
About Gerry
Gerry is a co-founder of Loci Orthopaedics and primary inventor on a number of granted patents for the InDX thumb implant, a world first in orthopaedic surgery.
Gerry has worked consistently in medical devices and diagnostics in both the US and Ireland since the late 1970s. He has held increasingly responsible technical and management roles within Technicon, Sherwood Medical and C.R. Bard/Medtronic. His expertise lies in process development, new technology investigation and product design methodologies.
Building an Adaptive Mountain Biking Community
Noel first spoke at the Design Leaders Conference in 2023. Project Mjolnir, his open-source adaptive mountain bike, is as much about building a movement and a community of users across the globe as it is about the design of the bike itself.
The Design Leaders Conference continues to track the progress of this remarkable project. Last year Noel forecast an ambitious plan for 2024. This year he will update us via video on the successful scaling of the project and the recruitment of new builders and riders in Europe, America, the Middle East, and Asia.
About Noel
Noel is a designer, lecturer and adaptive mountain biker. After a life changing mountain bike crash in 2006, he became a wheelchair user. This ended his career in the military, setting him on a new path to study industrial design at the South East Technological University in Carlow.
Later, as the head of design at HAX, a hardware startup accelerator in Shenzhen, Noel worked with over 200 startups on everything from robotics to consumer products. In July 2021, he joined NYU Shanghai as Clinical Instructor of Interactive Media and Business (IMB), teaching Innovation Lab and Prototyping for People.
During the pandemic, he reacquainted himself with his long-lost passion – mountain biking. Having proven by several crash tests that expensive factory-made adaptive mountain bikes are not suitable for wheelchair users, he created Project Mjolnir.
Noel is a popular international speaker and a champion of designers with disabilities.
PANEL DISCUSSION Ireland in an International Context: Does Ireland Hold the Aces?
Ireland’s creative star has (arguably) never risen so high, with Irish film, music and fashion being heralded across the world. So does Ireland have an edge in a global marketplace? Is now a good time to push our businesses internationally? What does it take to expand a design business overseas? IDI’s CEO Charlotte Barker will talk with three Irish business leaders who have done just that and who are willing to openly share their journeys with our audience.
Hear from Niamh Higgins, Managing Director of Tap Creative talking of their expansion into the UK; Robert Carpenter, Founder of Granite Digital now managing 8 global offices; and Claire Corbett, former board director of Rothco (now Droga 5 / Accenture Song) and Managing Consultant for All Kinds of Magic. Plus we will be joined by Enterprise Ireland’s Senior Client Adviser, Conor Stewart, who specialises in working with businesses in our sector to support their export journeys.
About Claire
A Creative Industry leader, Claire has led creative businesses through pivotal change for over 20 years. She began her career at McConnell’s and Publicis Dublin. From there, she joined the Board of Rothco, which saw the business grow from 40 to over 100 people in 6 years.
Drawn by the ambition to reunite creative and media, Claire joined the board of Spark Foundry and soon moved to the parent company Core as Director of Agency Development. There, she drove an ambitious two-year group transformation programme that unified nine independent agencies, employing 300 people across strategy, data, media, research, creative, technology, sponsorship, recruitment, and training disciplines.
In 2020, All Kinds of Magic was born with a simple mission: to equip Creative Leaders with the Methods, Models and Mastery for better business. Claire works with leaders to gain new perspectives and build future strategies, applying her experience to arm them with new growth models, long-term relevance and sustainable value.
PANEL DISCUSSION Ireland in an International Context: Does Ireland Hold the Aces?
Ireland’s creative star has (arguably) never risen so high, with Irish film, music and fashion being heralded across the world. So does Ireland have an edge in a global marketplace? Is now a good time to push our businesses internationally? What does it take to expand a design business overseas? IDI’s CEO Charlotte Barker will talk with three Irish business leaders who have done just that and who are willing to openly share their journeys with our audience.
Hear from Niamh Higgins, Managing Director of Tap Creative talking of their expansion into the UK; Robert Carpenter, Founder of Granite Digital now managing 8 global offices; and Claire Corbett, former board director of Rothco (now Droga 5 / Accenture Song) and Managing Consultant for All Kinds of Magic. Plus we will be joined by Enterprise Ireland’s Senior Client Adviser, Conor Stewart, who specialises in working with businesses in our sector to support their export journeys.
About Robert
Robert is the co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of Granite, Ireland’s largest independent marketing agency.
Granite is making strides in expanding its global presence with a strong focus on the US and EMEA.
Granite has completed 14 acquisitions over 14 years and earned prestigious accolades such as the Design Team of the Year award by the IDI in 2025, multiple Deloitte Fast50 awards and recognition as one of the “Best Places to Work in Tech” by Great Place to Work.
Following the recent opening of its Dubai office, Granite targets a significant expansion in the US and MENA, over the next 24 months, to broaden its footprint in international markets.
PANEL DISCUSSION Ireland in an International Context: Does Ireland Hold the Aces?
Ireland’s creative star has (arguably) never risen so high, with Irish film, music and fashion being heralded across the world. So does Ireland have an edge in a global marketplace? Is now a good time to push our businesses internationally? What does it take to expand a design business overseas? IDI’s CEO Charlotte Barker will talk with three Irish business leaders who have done just that and who are willing to openly share their journeys with our audience.
Hear from Niamh Higgins, Managing Director of Tap Creative talking of their expansion into the UK; Robert Carpenter, Founder of Granite Digital now managing 8 global offices; and Claire Corbett, former board director of Rothco (now Droga 5 / Accenture Song) and Managing Consultant for All Kinds of Magic. Plus we will be joined by Enterprise Ireland’s Senior Client Adviser, Conor Stewart, who specialises in working with businesses in our sector to support their export journeys.
About Niamh
Niamh leads TapCreative, a Dublin-based design agency with a 10-year legacy in transforming brands and experiences. With over three decades of experience in creative, marketing and business leadership, she is driving the agency's evolution, establishing it as a leader in the Irish market, focused on experience-led retail, healthcare, hospitality and workplace design.
Known for her strategic vision and collaborative approach, Niamh is spearheading TapCreative's expansion beyond Ireland, with a growing presence in Germany. She is a passionate advocate for Irish design, writing and speaking on trends and the future of brand experience.
TapCreative is recognised for its human-centred approach, seamlessly blending brand design, environment design and digital with insight and innovation to create holistic brand journeys. Driven by a vision of inclusive connections across physical, digital and experiential spaces, they have received multiple awards, including Design Practice of the Year and an IDI Special Award for Universal Design. TapCreative partners with leading brands like Musgrave, Laya Healthcare, Petmania, Maxol, United Hardware, FBD, PTSB and Compass Group.
PANEL DISCUSSION Ireland in an International Context: Does Ireland Hold the Aces?
Ireland’s creative star has (arguably) never risen so high, with Irish film, music and fashion being heralded across the world. So does Ireland have an edge in a global marketplace? Is now a good time to push our businesses internationally? What does it take to expand a design business overseas? IDI’s CEO Charlotte Barker will talk with three Irish business leaders who have done just that and who are willing to openly share their journeys with our audience.
Hear from Niamh Higgins, Managing Director of Tap Creative talking of their expansion into the UK; Robert Carpenter, Founder of Granite Digital now managing 8 global offices; and Claire Corbett, former board director of Rothco (now Droga 5 / Accenture Song) and Managing Consultant for All Kinds of Magic. Plus we will be joined by Enterprise Ireland’s Senior Client Adviser, Conor Stewart, who specialises in working with businesses in our sector to support their export journeys.
About Conor
Conor is the Senior Development Advisor, Commercial Creative Sector at Enterprise Ireland. Prior to EI, Conor has worked in multinational companies and with the IDA, and has been in EI for the past 3 years.