Mainstage Presentation
15. How to Generate Disruptive Ideas
Matthew Manos, verynice 

The most innovative ideas in the world often come from a spark of genius that is seemingly impossible to replicate. The ability to improvise, think creatively, and form connections is a skillset that allows truly innovative people to see things others do not. The good news? This mindset can actually be practiced and nurtured. Through this interactive presentation experience, participants will be challenged to unlock that innovator's mindset in order to generate new and disruptive ideas, and will be introduced to a framework for evaluating ideas.

Mainstage Presentation
10. Resilience by Design: Lessons in Creativity, Leadership, and Hope
Sheharazad Fleming, WE MUST BE BOLD

In-house designers are often called to do more than create—they must persuade, advocate, and lead with resilience. Yet resilience is more than endurance; it is the act of adapting, reinventing, and holding on to a vision. Drawing on her career across universities, city government, and cultural organizations, Sheharazad Fleming shares how she has navigated moments of urgency and change. Through case studies, she illustrates resilience as a creative leader, from advocating for design’s strategic role in higher education to mobilizing design for civic and cultural impact. This session invites designers to reimagine resilience not as survival, but as a powerful act of hope and creativity.

Mainstage Presentation
UCDA Business Meeting & UCDA Foundation Scholarship Presentation

Hear from UCDA leadership and meet this year’s professional development scholarship winners, presented by the UCDA Foundation.

Mainstage Presentation
4. NASA by Design
David Rager, NASA

Join David Rager, NASA’s creative director, for an inspiring look at how art, design, education, and culture come together to shape how we communicate the wonders of space. Drawing from his wide-ranging experience—collaborating with museums, restaurants, design studios, and major public institutions—Rager will explore how storytelling, aesthetics, and science intersect to create meaningful, visually striking, and educational experiences that bring the cosmos closer to all of us.

Mainstage Presentation
3. From Fragments to Frameworks: Collage-Making as Process, Practice, and Pedagogy
Astha Thakkar, Visual Artist & Educator
Winner of the 2025 Krider Prize for Creativity
Presented by the UCDA Foundation

Join Astha Thakkar as she discusses her process-oriented approach to design, where collage serves as both method and metaphor for inquiry. The talk will explore how acts of layering, deconstruction, and re-contextualization become tools for iterative thinking and reflection.

Mainstage Presentation
1. Finding the Sunny Side: Design in California Then and Now
Louise Sandhaus, Graphic Designer and Educator

Louise Sandhaus, author of the seminal book on California graphic design history, Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California and Graphic Design, 1936-1986 celebrates resilience, reinvention, and imagination in times of upheaval and change. Louise will share the tangents of her work as a California designer and observations about the state’s design past to consider how alternative visions lead to other possibilities for design—and for our lives.

Don’t miss the conference closing and raffle drawing for a free conference registration for 2025! You must be present to win.

MAINSTAGE PRESENTATION

16. (work)Shoppe of Curiosities
Stefan Mumaw, First Person

How curious are you? For most adults, curiosity takes a back seat to knowledge, but should it? As children, everything was new to us so curiosity and learning were innate. As adults, we typically only learn to accomplish goals. Curiosity wanes. But as creatives, curiosity is what fuels novelty in our problem solving. When it’s absent, we fall back on the expected and the experienced. So Creative Boot Camp author Stefan Mumaw is going to show you how to get your curiosity mojo back in a fun, exercise-filled workshop. He’ll break down the role curiosity plays in the creative process, lay out the trouble with “knowing enough,” and use creative exercises to illustrate the Five Shoppe Stops that re-engage your curiosity muscles as you peruse this conceptual (work)Shoppe of Curiosities.

MAINSTAGE PRESENTATION

15. Building a Next Generation Brand
Elias Martinez and Kelly King-Green, Texas State University

The New York Times calls Texas "the Future of America" because experts predict the massive demographic shifts it's experiencing will occur nationwide, creating a more diverse America. In the 2020 census, Texas added 4 million new residents, 95% of whom were people of color. Many will be first-generation college students.

Texas State University has also transformed, with student demographics that mirror the state. This seachange created an exciting opportunity for TXST to revitalize its brand and meet the next generation of Texans. In this session, members of the TXST team will share their strategies and learnings while leading the university's first rebranding effort in more than 17 years. 

MAINSTAGE PRESENTATION

6. Presence Changes Perception
Wendy Puffer, Marion Design Co.

Curiosity is best served over lunch! What happens when seventeen college students and three faculty invite community members from their local town to lunch at a vacant downtown bank every week for a whole summer? Learn how a summer internship team designed the city brand identity and website and launched the revitalization of a rural downtown with a team of designers armed with design thinking.

Wendy Puffer is a recovering design educator and the CEO of Marion Design Co. Her passions include creating custom design thinking sessions for teams, classrooms, and businesses. In 2021 she shifted from the college classroom to the studio after teaching Interior Design and Design for Social Impact for 21 years. She’ll share her story of being nimble through the journey of empowering her community by bringing students, designers, and community stakeholders together. She’ll provide principles for recognizing impossible problems and leveraging their power to become assets for good design!

Enjoy lunch (included with registration) and hear official updates about UCDA.

MAINSTAGE PRESENTATION

1..Artivism
Daniel Arzola, 2024 Krider Prize for Creativity Recipient
Presented by the UCDA Foundation

Daniel Arzola’s Artivism tells the story of how an art student became the creator of the first LGBTQ+ campaign to gain media attention in Venezuela. The #NoSoyTuChiste (#ImNotaJoke) campaign went viral between 2013 and 2014 and has since been exhibited in cities worldwide. Since its inception, it has continued to be displayed in public spaces such as bus stops, subway stations, galleries, museums, and parks. In 2014, Daniel Arzola's work was selected by Madonna for her Art for Freedom project. Arzola currently resides in Minneapolis, where he works as a Senior Graphic Designer for the University of Minnesota.

Daniel Arzola’s narrative serves as a queer testimony of Venezuela during the Chavista dictatorship, but it is also a testament to the power of art as a response to systematic violence. His Artivism talk explores the role of art in its capacity to communicate and the democratization of art in the face of repressive societies.