Zak Kyes, “Identity Crisis”

• Livestream Link: This event will be in person and livestreamed. The livestream is available at the top of this page: https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/event/identity-crisis/
• Please note: RSVP does not guarantee entry, which is filled on a first-come-first-served basis. Doors open 15 minutes before the event begins, so be sure to arrive early.

About This Event

Design is not simply in crisis; it’s in an identity crisis—a profession uncertain of its purpose, value, and future. In this talk, Zak Kyes, founder and creative director of Zak Group, traces how design has historically metabolized moments of rupture: from the printing press to platform capitalism, from wartime propaganda to today’s prompt-driven production. Drawing on two decades of work across cultural institutions, fashion, and contemporary art, he shows how the sands have shifted: the mid-tier collapse, the acceleration of AI, and a profession increasingly compressed into speed, style—and little else.

Drawing from recent projects with Nike, Dover Street Market, and others, Kyes introduces a set of practical frameworks he calls Crisis Overrides: tools for navigating uncertainty, protecting authorship, and reclaiming strategic agency at a moment when design’s relevance is no longer guaranteed. Part memoir, part manifesto, part diagnosis, “Identity Crisis” reframes instability as a generative condition, reminds us that the most vital designs have always emerged because of chaos, not in spite of it.

Speaker

Zak Kyes is a Swiss-American creative director and the founder of Zak Group, a London-based design office working across fashion, art, sport, technology, and culture. His practice integrates strategic positioning, visual identity, spatial design, and cultural research into a single, research-led approach. For over a decade, he served as the Art Director of the Architectural Association School of Architecture and has taught at École cantonale d'art de Lausanne. At Zak Group he leads projects for partners including Nike, CHANEL, Prada, Frank Ocean, Anne Imhof, Virgil Abloh, and institutions such as MMK Frankfurt and Hartwig Art Foundation. His work has been exhibited globally at institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig, Tensta Konsthall, the Graham Foundation, and the Architectural Association. He is the co-author and editor of books including Forms of Inquiry (AA Publications), CryptoPunks: Free to Claim (Phaidon), and Zak Kyes Working With… (Sternberg Press).

Read more at: https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/event/identity-crisis/

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Host or Publisher Harvard University Graduate School of Design