Robynne Raye is a co-founder of the Seattle-based Modern Dog Design Co, an internationally acclaimed design and illustration studio that opened in 1987. Her client list includes Showtime, The New York Times, Coca-Cola, Nordstrom, HarperCollins, Warner Bros. Records, Hillary Clinton, and K2 Snowboards. Her posters have been exhibited internationally, and are collected in the archives of major libraries and museums worldwide, including the Library of Congress, Bibliothèque National de France, Museum Fur Kunst und Gewerbe, the Smithsonian Institute’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Guan Shanyue Art Museum, and the Louvre’s Musee Des Arts Decoratifs, among others.

For over thirty years, Raye has lectured extensively about design issues and led workshops around the world. In 2013, Graphic Design USA Magazine listed her as one of the "50 Most Influential Designers Working Today.” She is the co-author of Modern Dog, 20 Years of Poster Art and Inside the World of Board Graphics: Skate, Surf, Snow, and author of 1000 Dog Portraits.

Drawn early as a kid to grocery store paper signage, and sports logos, the tone was set there. 

During the early 90’s (due mostly to technological advancements); the hand painted aspect, and that look of general signage, took a dive. Around this time graffiti would start to catch my eye as a teenager.  That soon turned into an obsession that required drawing constantly and working with all sorts of surfaces. By my 20’s I was working with a small mural painting company employing at risk youth.  With a passion for good aesthetics in advertisement, and a love for letters and colors especially, sign painting naturally formed from my upbringing. 

Being a self-taught person already, it all just fit. Now with over a decade of hand painting signs, it’s become my career and lifestyle.  Written language has the ability and power to communicate an emotion, alongside its main purpose of conveying a message. The right typeface can paint a picture before the information is revealed. 

My goal is to keep the art of hand lettering alive and well. 

Tory Franklin is a visual artist working with diverse media unified by pattern, print, and narrative. Since 2010, Franklin has focused on public installations inspired by folktales that are accompanied by screen-printed books, posters, and other ephemera. Her work has been exhibited at MAD Art, Bellevue City Hall, Storefronts Seattle, Storefronts Auburn, Spaceworks Tacoma, the Renton Arts Commission, Arts-A-Glow festival, Portland Winter Light Festival, the VERA Project, and 826 Seattle. She has received a Seattle Office of Arts & Culture City Artists project grant, a 4Culture project grant, and an Artist Trust GAP grant for these projects. In 2015, Franklin created her first permanent window piece with her sister, Eroyn Franklin, for Harborview Medical Center, and is currently working on SoundTransit’s Star Lake light rail station in Kent slated to open in 2024.

Dan D. Shafer is a graphic designer, artist, and educator living and working in Seattle. He owns Dandy Co., a graphic design studio specializing in book design, installation, and environmental design (as well as event promotion and branding). The studio's clients include Kronos Quartet, American Cancer Society, Salish Lodge, Herman Miller, and Pratt Fine Arts Center.

Shafer is also the creative director at Chin Music Press. His self-initiated social practice installations explore the nebulous territory that exists between traditional definitions of "art" and "design," and investigate how people interact with objects in their everyday lives.

I am energized by the spirited exchange of expression and ideas. I am a metal worker, sculptor and installation artist. I have always worked with my hands; gardening, farming, fabricating. I took my first metal working class at Pratt Fine Art Center nearly 25 years ago and went on to get a certificate in Welding/Fabrication at South Seattle Community College specializing in non-ferrous metals and blacksmithing. 

I have been a metalworker in various industrial and artistic capacities ever since: I ran public art programs in SE Seattle high school and middle schools, as well as worked alongside established artists and builders. I have recently returned to Pratt teaching forging and welding for adults, families and and teens. I also teach at Burkehead Art Center and Coyote Central.  I maintain a shop/art practice on our family farm amongst the goats in Woodinville, Wa. 

As a Japanese woman living in the United States, I often struggle with my attempts to communicate. Not only is English my second language, but also the stereotypes of Asian women make it difficult for me to build healthy relationships. I feel the impact of being minoritized is much more in America, where assumptions about Asians are both superficial and hurtful. At the same time, Asian ideals of womanhood and beauty have been affected by Western culture: the resulting twisted idea of beauty is internalized by Asian women, eating away at our identity and self-worth.

I make sculptures using mundane materials. Shapes of objects are constructed in a distorted manner to reflect the misunderstanding between people. I am trying to expose the absurdities of a manipulative social structure. Many of my sculptures have received awards from major institutions such as the Jule Collins Smith Art Museum in Alabama and Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh.

I have been encouraged to speak louder as an Asian artist since the racial equity movement has grown recently. Through my art, I would like to express the reality of being minoritized in this country. I challenge the tradition of the “silent Asian woman” to reveal the complexities that lie underneath the guise of the superficial “dream” of being an Asian woman.

Ellen Forney is the author of the bestselling graphic memoir, Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, & Me, and its companion book, Rock Steady: Brilliant Advice From My Bipolar Life. Marbles has been translated into six foreign languages and was the selection for common book programs at the University of Washington Health Sciences schools and UC Davis. She curated an exhibition for the National Library of Medicine on Graphic Medicine, comics about health, and has given talks and lectures internationally at universities, conferences, and institutions, including a recent TED talk. As a visual artist, she created two large-scale murals for Seattle’s Capitol Hill light rail station. She has taught comics at Cornish College of the Arts since 2002 and is currently working on a middle-grade book on making autobiographical comics.