A template for a website that depicts a cityscape in the sunlight. The template is made for pc's, tablets and mobile phones.
A photo of colorful gradient plastic cups, 3d can designs, napkins, a slinky and other type of colorful pottery.
A group of students trying some cardboard 3D virtual reality glasses.
A photo of a man weaving, while sitting near a light pole, in front of a street panel with text: I'm Adam.

Alumni Spotlight: Adam Katz

Oct 13 2016

I am a creative lead and designer at Google Creative Lab in New York. We work across all of Google’s products and teams to remind users why they love Google and to connect them to the great things the company makes.

SVA MFA Design taught me about product design, storytelling and led me to find a career and place in which I can be entrepreneurial with my thinking and design work. Thankfully Google and Creative Lab let me do that all the time.

My style/ethos is very much focused on what I have been taught and teach as a total user experience. By total user experience I like to think of a product or brand from start to finish; how does a user heard about the brand, how do they encounter it, what do they love about it, and how do they share or exit the brand. Through thinking through all of a user’s touch points I can better design a great and unified experience.

At SVA MFA Design, I learned and firmly believe in research in any project I work on. I research to become as well-versed in any topic no matter how diverse they are that I work on. I also learned from SVA and employ daily at Creative Lab the power of making. Sometimes a mock can go further than words or slide decks can.

I would advise incoming students to embrace the fact that you are in school. Experiment, push yourself, make mistakes often and try to figure out your voice or point of view or interest in design through trial. You can’t do that with the same rewards in the working world.

I’ve been a part of some really great things at Google that I am really proud of. Of note; I worked to develop the OnHub smart router from name and brand to the hardware and app. I then worked to push the category with the OnHub Makers gallery. I’ve also worked in education and VR in developing Google Expeditions and creating content for the platform. Recently I’ve been able to be a part of developing Verily, an Alphabet company’s, work on Zika with Project Debug.

Visit Adam’s website adamnk.com and get in touch!

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