KU Design Professional Lecture Series
For over 40 years, the KU Design Professional Lecture Series (formerly Hallmark Symposium) has enriched educational experiences by introducing KU students to designers and artists working in a wide range of disciplines and professional fields.
Spring 2025 Schedule
Lectures begin at 6 p.m. in 3140 Wescoe Hall on the KU Lawrence campus. Events are free and open to the public.
January 30
Jacob Crawford, Footwear Designer at Vans
Jacob Crawford is a designer and University of Kansas industrial design program graduate who has developed footwear, accessories, packaging, and textiles for multiple sportswear and lifestyle brands. As a footwear designer at Vans, Crawford has designed performance, lifestyle, and children’s shoes. With an artful application of research, technical expertise, and creative inspiration, Crawford works to ensure his designs meet the functional and stylistic needs of customers.
February 13
Chad Hutson, Chief Strategy Officer at Dimensional Innovations
Chad Hutson has forged a notable career leading teams of creative and technology professionals to help some of the world’s most recognized brands and entertainers transform physical spaces into engaging analog and digital experiences. At Dimensional Innovations, Hutson works with experience design, fabrication, and technology teams to develop innovative and immersive customer experiences. Formerly, as co-founder and CEO of specialized creative agency Leviathan, Hutson led operations, business development, and strategy for the organization, which fostered client relationships with Airbus, Amazon, Disney, FedEx, Nike, T-Mobile, and Universal and others.
February 27
Adam Ekberg, photographer
Adam Ekberg creates image-based works that evoke narratives and provoke critical considerations. Through surrealistic photographs that depict mass-produced consumer objects removed from context – arranged in sculptural assemblages, isolated in natural landscapes, and often captured in motion – Ekberg uses scale, juxtaposition, and sendups of popular visual culture to create compositions that can feel both playfully comedic and unsettlingly enigmatic. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the George Eastman Museum, and others.
March 6
Chad W. Beckerman, art director and illustrator
Chad W. Beckerman is an art director focusing on design, strategy, and directing illustration and images for stories. Beckerman has overseen the design of picture books, novels, graphic novels, and art and entertainment books – including 40 New York Times Bestsellers – under the Abrams Appleseed, Abrams Books for Young Readers, Amulet Books, and Abrams ComicArts imprints. He currently maintains an independent studio specializing in art direction, book design, illustration, and photography.
March 27
Kelli Connel, photographer
Kelli Connell is an artist who investigates sexuality, gender, identity and photographer-sitter relationships. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and others. Publications include Kelli Connell: Pictures for Charis (Aperture and Center for Creative Photography, March 2024), PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice (Aperture), Photo Art: The New World of Photography (Aperture), and the monograph Kelli Connell: Double Life (DECODE Books). Connell has received fellowships and residencies from The Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, PLAYA, Peaked Hill Trust, LATITUDE, Light Work and The Center for Creative Photography.
April 10
Jeff Breazeale, Founding Partner at The Matchbox Studio
Jeff Breazeale is a designer and brand strategist. He has worked for over 25 years helping clients identify brand opportunities and develop creative solutions. At Matchbox Studio, he has led teams developing work for clients that include American Airlines, Dallas Museum of Art, FedEx, Fossil, Neenah Paper, The State Fair of Texas, and dozens more. In 2020, Breazeale launched MBX Real Estate Creative, a sister-agency to Matchbox dedicated to multi-family residential branding.
April 24
Dan Padavic, art director and printmaker
Dan Padavic is a multimedia art director and founder of Valhalla Studios, a full service flat-stock screen printing and letterpress studio in North Kansas City, Missouri. Padavic’s work incorporates the hand of a printmaker combined with the sensibilities of a graphic designer to produce multifaceted strategic branding projects for clients large and small.