Schedule
Prepare to explore 6 powerful keynotes on the main stage, 2 spotlights, 16 breakout sessions, and 2 Lunch & Learns—bringing fresh perspectives, creative intersections, and new possibilities into orbit.
Day 1
8:00 AM -
8:45 AM
Registration
Pick up your badge and tote in the lobby and get ready to launch!
8:45 AM -
9:00 AM
Welcome to PHXDW 2026
Emcee Paul Mendoza
9:00 AM -
9:45 AM
KEYNOTE: Reimagining NASA.gov to Tell Earth’s Most Important Stories
Ben Shown & Megan Greco
Over the past few years, Blink UX has collaborated with teams across NASA to reimagine their digital ecosystem. The result: a bold new web experience and the Horizon Design System, built to tell NASA’s most important stories with clarity, conviction, and craft. In this session, Ben and Megan pull back the curtain on designing with rocket scientists, sharing how vision meets velocity in a high-stakes collaboration. Expect real talk on aligning stakeholders, designing for scale, and building a system that helps humanity understand the universe.
10:00 AM - 10:45 AM
KEYNOTE: Copyright in the Age of AI
Chuong Boi
AI is rapidly reshaping the creative landscape, raising new questions about ownership, authorship, and protection. This session will provide a practical overview of copyright law, including the bundle of exclusive rights and the importance of registration, examine how AI companies are currently using creative works, review recent legal developments, and discuss what they mean for designers. We’ll close with practical strategies creatives can use to protect their work and adapt their businesses as AI continues to transform the creative economy.
10:45 AM -
11:15 AM
TRANSITION BREAK
11:15 AM - 12:00 PM
MORNING BREAKOUTS
Choose from one of four sessions in topic tracks: 1. Warp Speed (Software & Tools), 2. Mission Control (Business & Career), 3. Space Craft (Creativity & Craft), 4. Life Support (Culture, Community & Communication)
1. Monthly Social Media Graphics with Firefly Boards
Patience Walton
This session is fully interactive — bring your laptop! Attendees will build alongside me in real time, following my creative direction process for developing a month of social media graphics using Firefly Boards. We’ll move through moodboarding, color, typography, iconography, and backgrounds, applying each stage to your own project as we go. Rather than just seeing a polished final result, you’ll see the real decisions and reasoning behind the process. By the end, you’ll walk away with a repeatable framework for building consistent, on-brand visual content — plus a head start on your own month of social graphics. (NOTE: WiFi may not be available, be prepared to use your own cell service/ personal hotspot)
2. Starting Over Again & Again: Use Your Skills to Forge Your Own Path
Dahlia Ishak
Finding your footing in a creative career is unpredictable, personal and riddled with detours and dead ends. Creatives can underestimate the value and impact of their skills as makers and problem-solvers. By harnessing these abilities, designers become empowered to create their own opportunities and drive change in areas they’re passionate about. Creatives can underestimate the value and impact of their skills as makers and problem-solvers. By harnessing these abilities, designers become empowered to create their own opportunities and drive change in areas they’re passionate about. If they position themselves as their own client, anything is possible.
3. Stop Designing Posts. Start Designing the Campaign.
Patrick Jervis
Great design doesn’t live in isolation. In this hands-on workshop, we’ll explore how to take one event or message and turn it into a connected content campaign that captures attention, communicates clearly, and inspires action. Using real-world examples from event promotion, entertainment, small business, and community marketing, we’ll map the “orbit” around a central idea and identify what each piece of content needs to accomplish. You’ll leave with a practical, repeatable framework for creating cohesive campaigns—whether you’re designing for a client, a brand, or yourself. Come ready to think beyond the post, get creative, and build something you can actually use.
4. Science Communication: From Space to the Ocean
Shireen Dooling
Learn how to navigate the evolving landscape of marketing and designing for science. From academia, government, non-profit, and the commercial sector, Shireen has worked on teams that have led science communication to new eras. Join this session to hear about methods you can use to explain complex topics to public audiences and how to find science communication opportunities within your networks.
12:00 PM -
1:30 PM
LUNCH BREAK: On Your Own or Join a Lunch ‘N’ Learn
Walk to one of the many nearby restaurants in the area for lunch on your own, or pick up your preordered lunchbox and join one of the Lunch ‘N’ Learn sessions described below. (See “add-on’s” section of order form to preorder a catered lunchbox.) You may sit in on the Lunch ‘N’ Learn session without ordering a lunchbox, but please note that the convention center does not allow outside meals to be brought into the venue.
12:15 PM – 01:15 PM
LUNCH ‘N’ LEARN: Beyond the Prompt
Johnny Guerra
AI is quickly becoming part of every designer’s orbit, but the real opportunity isn’t better prompts. It’s building a system where people, knowledge, and AI work together to amplify creativity. In this interactive workshop with Johnny Guerra, Design Innovations Manager at Veritiv, attendees will learn practical ways to use AI as a research partner, thinking partner, and communication tool while keeping human creativity at the center. Through live demonstrations and hands-on exercises, participants will map their own creative orbit, identify opportunities to work smarter, and leave with a repeatable framework they can immediately apply to design projects, innovation efforts, and everyday creative work.
12:15 PM – 01:15 PM
LUNCH ‘N’ LEARN: Beyond the Résumé: Tell Accomplishment Stories to Get Results
Evelyn Vega, Amanda Miller
Whether you’re writing your résumé or preparing for an interview, compelling accomplishment stories are what capture the attention of recruiters and hiring managers. In this practical session, you’ll learn how to turn your experience into concise, persuasive case studies using the CAR and CART frameworks. We’ll explain what these acronyms mean and show you how to identify the challenge, highlight the actions you took, and communicate your results with impact. Candidates who share strong accomplishment stories are more likely to stand out, secure interviews, and get hired because they differentiate themselves from other applicants and provide credible evidence that past performance can predict future success. You’ll leave with a repeatable formula for strengthening your résumé and preparing memorable interview stories that clearly demonstrate the value you bring.
1:30 PM -
2:15 PM
AFTERNOON BREAKOUTS
Choose from one of four sessions in topic tracks: Warp Speed (Software & Tools), Mission Control (Business & Career), Space Craft (Creativity & Craft), Life Support (Culture, Community & Communication) – details to be announced
1. Crushing AI Prompts for Design & Dev
Matt Adams
Are you struggling to get creative, unique, and on-brand work out of AI? Hate AI because it lacks that human creative view? Good news: you’re just doing it wrong. Here is the exciting part, we can fix that. We’ll cover • writing robust prompts for success • challenging AI to stop being a yes machine • building your personal systems that make AI a tool that accelerates your work.
2. How to Get Clients: Be the Moon of Your Galaxy
Rachel Perez
Where will you find your next client? They might be closer in your orbit than you think. In this hands-on session, I’ll show you where to find clients, how to build the kind of gravity that brings the right people to you, how to close the right ones without pressure, and how growing your own confidence makes all of it easier. I’ll share what’s worked for me from my first freelance project in 2011 to the past five years of running my branding studio full-time. Then you’ll map your own constellation, draft a real message, and make first contact with at least one person before you leave.
3. Album Art in Orbit: Create a Cover with Photoshop and Illustrator
Michael Mondragon
Discover how Photoshop and Illustrator can work together to transform a simple collection of images, type, textures, and vector elements into original album artwork. In this hands-on workshop, you’ll build a square album cover while exploring selections, masks, adjustment layers, Smart Objects, typography, and creative compositing. Work from a supplied asset kit, make your own design decisions, and see how other creatives interpret the same brief. You’ll leave with a finished cover, a repeatable workflow, and practical techniques you can use in future design projects.
4. The Power of Play: How to Ignite Creativity, Grit, and Play in Any Team
Wade Holland
Through captivating stories and experiences, Wade will ignite excitement and curiosity with attendees to help them find a renewed sense of purpose and passion. He will teach the audience tactical tools and skills to take into their own lives to build more play, purpose, and passion with their own individual frameworks. * Teams will walk away with tools to reignite creativity * Develop a play-driven mindset that leads to innovative storytelling and brand building * Learn simple key habits that anyone can master, which lead to higher productivity and a renewed sense of motivation.
2:15 PM -
2:30 PM
TRANSITION BREAK
2:30 PM -
2:45 PM
Welcome from AIGA Arizona
2:45 PM -
3:15 PM
SPOTLIGHT: Behind the Orbit Brand
Cory Skaaren
In space, no one can hear you scream. Especially when it’s three in the morning, and you have a deadline! This behind-the-mission look at PHXDW: Orbit explores how the brand was shaped by a constellation of conversations, constraints, collaborators, accidents, intersections, and ideas pulled into and out of its orbit.
3:15 PM -
3:45 PM
SPOTLIGHT: Being Humankind
Justin Ahrens
Being HumanKind grew out of a question I find myself asking more as I evolve in my career: With all the things we are busy doing, building, achieving, and chasing, who are we becoming? The book explores 29 ways of being, including kindness, gratitude, curiosity, courage, vulnerability, creativity, presence, and connection. These are not 29 things I have mastered. They are 29 things I am still trying to practice. BONUS: Justin will be signing copies of his book at the Orbit Reception.
4:00 PM -
5:00 PM
KEYNOTE: Sunshine and Storms: Weathering a Creative Life
Tad Carpenter
In this honest walk through Tad Carpenter’s studio’s creative process, Tad shares how his childhood wandering of Hallmark’s hallways sparked a lifelong love affair with playful, purposeful design. You’ll get an intimate look at how he and his wife and creative partner, Jessica, transform their curiosity and wonder into award-winning brand systems that capture hearts and turn heads. Part behind-the-scenes studio tour, part inspiration rally, this presentation delivers honest insights wrapped in warmth and wit.
5:00 PM -
5:30 PM
CLOSING COMMENTS // GROUP PHOTO
Everyone up to the main stage to capture one of the now-famous PHXDW group photos!
5:30 PM -
6:00 PM
TRANSITION BREAK
Take a break, check your messages, shop the Popups and sponsor booths, and stroll the Get Out the Vote poster display while we set up for the Orbit Reception.
6:00 PM -
8:00 PM
AFTER PARTY: ORBIT RECEPTION featuring Drink ‘N’ Draw
Join us after Day One of the PHXDW Conference for a reception with the keynote speakers, book signing with Justin Ahrens, and a special PHXDW edition of everyone’s favorite Drink-N-Draw PHX activities. Browse the AIGA Get Out The Vote poster exhibition, enjoy some snacks and a cash bar. Free for all conference attendees with badge, separate standalone paid registration will be offered for outside attendees in October.
While we make every effort to confirm speakers and schedules in advance, all programming is subject to change without notice. Speaker presentations and viewpoints are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of AIGA Arizona. Presentation content may include adult language, visuals, or topics.
Some speakers may choose to share their presentations with attendees after the conference, while others may restrict sharing of proprietary content. No livestream, recording, or virtual attendance options will be available.
Get Your Boarding Pass Now!
Get your boarding pass now—you won’t want to miss the mission. Join Arizona’s creative community for two days of ideas, connection, and collective momentum. Secure your seat and get ready to enter orbit.