To provide inspirational programming to the Greater Bay Area, AIGA San Francisco has launched a series of lectures at San Jose State University called “Small Talks, Big Ideas.”

Blaise Bertrand combines big picture thinking and object materiality as a senior designer, program manager, and location lead in IDEO’s Palo Alto studios. He has worked on projects for such clients as Medtronic, TDK, TiVo, Hewlett-Packard, and Nellcor.

His concept for a time capsule was selected as a finalist by the New York Times and two lamps he designed were exhibited in the Under the Sun exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt museum in New York.

Before returning to IDEO, Blaise worked for Motorola in both their San Francisco and Milan design studios, leading the 3G team in Europe to create new communication experiences. Prior to that, he explored the viability of the ebook plug-in and authoring tool initiative at Adobe Systems in San Jose.

Blaise periodically runs innovation seminars at the IAE business school in Aix-En-Provence France. He won design awards at IDEO, has several design patents both at IDEO (TDK, TIVO) and Motorola (3G phones), and his work has been featured in international magazines.

Blaise received his Master of Industrial Design from Les Ateliers (Ecole Nationale Superieure de Creation Industrielle) in Paris.

Founded in 1991, IDEO is an innovation and design firm that uses a human-centered, design-based approach to help organizations in the business, government, education, healthcare, and social sectors innovate and grow in three ways:

• Identify new ways to serve and support people by uncovering their latent needs, behaviors, and desires.
• Visualize new directions for companies and brands and design the offerings – products, services, spaces, media, and software – that bring innovation strategy to life.
• Enable organizations to change their cultures and build the capabilities required to sustain innovation

Special thanks to Joe Miller and San Jose State University for making this series possible.

Directions:
Art Building, Room 133
near 9th and San Carlos Streets
downtown San José [MAP]

Parking:
North Garage at South 10th and San Fernando Streets (hourly rates after 5:30 PM weekdays). Walk into campus on 9th to the Art Building on your right.

South Garage at South 7th and San Salvador Streets (Details)
Walk into campus on 7th, turn right at the Caesar Chavez Arch and continue to the far wing of the Art Building.