Marty Neumeier

Marty Neumeier is an author, designer, and brand adviser whose mission is to bring the principles and processes of design to business. His series of “whiteboard” books includes ZAG, named one of the “top hundred business books of all time,” and THE DESIGNFUL COMPANY, a bestselling guide to nonstop innovation. An online presentation of his first book, THE BRAND GAP, has been viewed more than 22 million times since 2003. A sequel, THE BRAND FLIP, lays out a new process for building brands in the age of social media and customer dominance. 

His most recent book, SCRAMBLE, is a “business thriller” about how to build a brand quickly with a new process called agile strategy. In 1996, Neumeier founded Critique magazine, the first journal about design thinking. He has worked closely with innovative companies such as Apple, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, HP, Adobe, Google, and Microsoft to help advance their brands and cultures. 

Today he serves as Director of Transformation for Liquid Agency in Silicon Valley and travels extensively as a workshop leader and speaker on the topics of design, brand, and innovation. He and his wife divide their time between California and southwest France.

Neumeier attended the Art Center College of Design from 1967 to 1969. For 15 years, he worked in advertising and brand design as a communication designer and writer in Southern California. In 1984 he moved to Silicon Valley to work with clients such as Adobe, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and Symantec. By 1998 his firm Neumeier Design Team created retail packaging for software products, including Filemaker, Norton Antivirus, Apple system software, and HP LaserJet. He was also a contributing editor for the magazine Communication Arts.

In 1996 he founded the "seminal but now-defunct design magazine Critique," a quarterly publication about design thinking. Critique's designer contributors included Robert Bringhurst, Ivan Chermayeff, Milton Glaser, Steven Heller, Stefan Sagmeister, Paula Scher, David Stuart, and Massimo Vignelli.

In 2003, Neumeier started Neutron, a San Francisco consulting firm specializing in internal branding, and wrote three books: The Brand Gap, Zag (included in The 100 Best Business Books of All Time by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten.), and The Designful Company. He also served on the board of directors of AIGA, known until 2005 as the American Institute of Graphic Arts, developing its first mission statement. He was president of the AIGA Center for Brand Experience, where he edited and published The Dictionary of Brand.