We chat with John Maeda, Chief Experience Officer at Publicis Sapient, about his journey into combining art and technology, going from working in academia to silicon valley, and his new book, “How to Speak Machine: Laws of Design For a Computational Age.”

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• Design in Tech Report
• WordPress
• STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics)
• Square
• RISD: Rhode Island School of Design
• Kleiner Perkins
• Automattic
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• Publicis Sapient

John Maeda

John Maeda is an American technologist, designer, engineer, artist, investor, author, and teacher. He is Chief Experience Officer at Publicis Sapient, the technology consulting and delivery arm of communications and marketing conglomerate Publicis. He has held positions with Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com; the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins; served as president of the Rhode Island School of Design; and began his early career at the MIT Media Lab at the intersection of computer science and visual art. Named as one of the “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century” by Esquire, Maeda draws on his diverse background as an MIT-trained engineer, award-winning designer, and MBA-community translator to bring people and ideas together at scale. He is the author of several celebrated books, including The Laws of Simplicity and Redesigning Leadership. He has appeared as a speaker all over the world, from Davos to Beijing to São Paulo to New York, and his talks for TED have received millions of views.