As an IDEO partner, Michael Hendrix leads the Boston studio and guides the firm’s East Coast-based Design Directors. Since joining the company in 2008, he has built a robust creative community and led key initiatives, most recently the redesign of IDEO’s global brand identity.
Throughout his 20-year career, Michael has brought an unorthodox sensibility to bear, inspiring creative talent and working with them to build design programs and organizations. A natural trailblazer and collaborator, he co-founded an art school for high schoolers, a professional design curriculum for undergrads, two professional design societies and three businesses, the last of which, Tricycle, was recognized by Business Week and Fortune as a thought leader for sustainable design. This diversity of roles has provided the opportunity for him to contribute to a number of leading brands and organizations including Converse, Tempur Sealy, Steelcase, Eli Lilly, the DIY Network, Interface, and the Department of Homeland Security.
He has also stayed committed to his graphic design craft, receiving upwards of 50 awards from major U.S. design associations and publications, with inclusion in the permanent collections of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and the Denver Art Museum.
Today his pursuit of creative development continues as he searches for “universal design principles” by knitting together knowledge from the fields of cognitive linguistics, mathematics, psychology and embodied cognition, a topic on which he has lectured and blogged for SXSW, FUSE, AIGA, Metropolis and Creative Mornings.
Michael is an AIGA Fellow— an honor acknowledging designers who have made a significant contribution to raising the standards of excellence in graphic design, a Marshall Memorial Fellow, and a BMW Foundation Alumnus, both acknowledging Trans-Atlantic leadership for political, social and cultural issues.
Throughout his 20-year career, Michael has brought an unorthodox sensibility to bear, inspiring creative talent and working with them to build design programs and organizations. A natural trailblazer and collaborator, he co-founded an art school for high schoolers, a professional design curriculum for undergrads, two professional design societies and three businesses, the last of which, Tricycle, was recognized by Business Week and Fortune as a thought leader for sustainable design. This diversity of roles has provided the opportunity for him to contribute to a number of leading brands and organizations including Converse, Tempur Sealy, Steelcase, Eli Lilly, the DIY Network, Interface, and the Department of Homeland Security.
He has also stayed committed to his graphic design craft, receiving upwards of 50 awards from major U.S. design associations and publications, with inclusion in the permanent collections of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and the Denver Art Museum.
Today his pursuit of creative development continues as he searches for “universal design principles” by knitting together knowledge from the fields of cognitive linguistics, mathematics, psychology and embodied cognition, a topic on which he has lectured and blogged for SXSW, FUSE, AIGA, Metropolis and Creative Mornings.
Michael is an AIGA Fellow— an honor acknowledging designers who have made a significant contribution to raising the standards of excellence in graphic design, a Marshall Memorial Fellow, and a BMW Foundation Alumnus, both acknowledging Trans-Atlantic leadership for political, social and cultural issues.
