Rebecca is co-founder of FrontierJapan, an independent research and innovation agency based in Yokohama. Hailing from Sydney, Australia she has been in Japan for 15+ years and is fluent in as many aspects of the language and culture as the mind cares to imagine. Her particular areas of expertise are in commercial semiotics, cultural insight and breaking trends, although she also makes a pretty mean sushi roll and is up with the best of them on early 90’s J-pop hits.
Yokohama, Japan
Maria spent over 10 years in advertising and research agencies (including ACNielsen, Publicis, BBDO), where she worked mainly as Media Research Director. She completed a dissertation on visual semiotics in 2004 and after that started working as a freelance semiotician with several international companies. She enjoyed the methodology so much that in 2009 she decided to make it her main field of specialization and founded semiotic and cultural research agency LocalTalk. Maria holds Masters (Hons) degree in Sociology and PhD in Social Psychology from State University of Management, Moscow.
Moscow, Russia
Hyaesook works for Korean design and culture magazine 'Cabinet' as a London coordinator & Editor. She worked for 8 years as a designer at a design museum in Seoul, Korea. Hyaesook is interested in space 'imaging' and 'language’ as a research tool to understand tacit consensus. She is personally looking into the potential of design along with thoughtful design thinking to help create increasingly positive futures. She is also a co-facilitator of the Metadesigners Open Network.
Hyaesook studied on the visionary Design Futures MA at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
London, UK