Karin Hibma Cronan
Karin Hibma Cronan is a Strategic Identity Consultant and Design Strategist at CRONAN with over 45 years of experience in strategic identity design, naming, and brand development. She is recognized as one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business and has created game-changing strategic identities for some of the world’s most successful products and organizations, including the naming of Amazon Kindle and TiVo.
As the principal of CRONAN, a strategic identity design consultancy she cofounded with her late husband Michael Patrick Cronan in 1980, Karin has worked with over 300 clients ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Her approach, Elegant Questions Design Answers, has transformed products, organizations, and individuals through deep listening and design thinking.
Her notable clients include Amazon, Apple, Estée Lauder Origins, Levi Strauss & Co., SFMOMA, and the Obama White House. She has helped these organizations find “the big idea” inherent in every project through cognitive identity insights and strategic design processes. Watch Karin Hibma, Founder of CRONAN, on creating the name Kindle for Amazon and making TiVo’s identity!
Karin’s work in social innovation and global development has been particularly transformative. She served on the leadership council of the International Design Conference in Aspen (IDCA) from 2004 to 2005, where she met Dr. Paul Polak, founder of International Development Enterprises (IDE).
Together with Polak, she helped develop the groundbreaking Design for the Other 90% exhibition at the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, which showcased products designed explicitly for the world’s poorest customers. She encouraged Polak to partner with the early Gates Foundation and strategized with executive teams as a partner in Polak Advisors, helping to author Out of Poverty and The Business Solution to Poverty. Read 90% of designers were designing for only 10% of the world’s customers, Design for the other 90%, and Designing With The Other 90%.
In 1992, Karin founded Cronan Artefact, a product development, manufacturing, and marketing company that created the Walking Man apparel line. The collection won International Design Magazine’s Consumer Product Gold Award and was presented at the United Nations and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. The brand was sold through one of the earliest online catalogs and was invited into the New York Designers Collective. The clothing line has maintained a devoted customer base for over 20 years, with the garments described as “big, warm and comforting” in Design Observer. Read Walking Man Online Catalogue.
Earlier in her career, Karin founded Design Resource in 1974, a creative research company where she worked with illustrators, photographers, and filmmakers on advertising, commercial, and documentary projects until 1980.
During this period, she researched and wrote Creativity: The Human Resource, a major traveling exhibition funded by Chevron that examined the creative process of contemporary Americans. She personally researched over 1,000 candidates, profiled over 200, and interviewed 50 prominent figures including John Cage, Judy Chicago, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Lawrence Halprin, Margaret Mead, Linus Pauling, and Jonas Salk. Through this project, she became the model for artist Judy Chicago’s “Birth Project” and established a lifelong correspondence with Dr. Salk. Read Karin Hibma has a deep understanding and connection with creativity.
Karin earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Fine Arts and Language from California State University-Sacramento in 1974, where she discovered letterpress in a junior high class that eventually led to her career in design. During her studies from 1969 to 1974, she spent time working, traveling, and studying in Germany and France from 1971 to 1973, expanding her international perspective on design and culture.
Throughout her career, Karin has served on numerous prestigious boards and advisory positions. She served on the AIGA National Board from 2016 to 2019 and was named a 2012 AIGA San Francisco Fellow, one of the highest honors in the design profession. She serves on the Board of New Performance Traditions, Inc / The Paul Dresher Ensemble and was a Board Member of San Francisco Women in Advertising. She has been on the Board of Advisors for Design for Social Innovation at the School of Visual Arts in New York, a cross-disciplinary MFA program that integrates design, entrepreneurship, data analysis, ethics, and game theory. Additionally, she is an advisor to the Creative Summit and hosted CS29 in San Marcos, Texas, a Long Now Foundation member, and The Interval advisor.
Karin has received significant recognition for her contributions to design and business innovation. In 2009, she was named one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business, with editor Bob Safian describing the list as “a new resource that defines an influential, diverse group of modern Renaissance men and women across the economy and around the globe.”
In 2014, she and CRONAN curated an exhibition honoring AIGA’s 100 Years of Design Centennial at the Center for Architecture + Design Gallery in San Francisco, featuring legendary designers’ early work and process. The CRONAN Intensity Award, introduced in 2012, honors the intense creative spirit of the Cronan family and provides scholarships to emerging designers. Listen to INTERVIEW with Karin Hibma-Cronan on Design Strategy & Clarity.
As a sought-after speaker and thought leader, Karin has presented at major conferences including the Aspen Design Leadership Summit, AIGA Leadership conferences, and numerous design events. She has been featured in publications including The Invisibles by David Zweig, which profiles people who make things we don’t notice, and has contributed to discussions about transforming fear into curiosity in high-stakes business situations. Her philosophy centers on the belief that “design thinking and creative process are potent strategic ingredients in any worthwhile endeavor.”
Karin lives and works in the Berkeley hills of California with her family. She has two sons: Shawn Hibma Cronan, an accomplished sculptor and furniture designer who creates commissioned public art, and Nick Cronan, an award-winning industrial designer and founder of Branch. Her late husband, Michael Patrick Cronan, received the prestigious 2014 AIGA Medal posthumously for his sustained contribution to design excellence. Her father Sidney lived with the family until he passed at age 93, contributing the theme “Serenity” and a love of bird-watching to the Hibma Cronan’s lives and work.
Watch Karin Hibma, Founder of CRONAN, on creating the name Kindle for Amazon and making TiVo’s identity! and Ask Great Questions with Karin Hibma Cronan of Cronan.
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