Oscar Pena
Oscar’s main function at Philips Design is Global Senior Creative Director for Lighting. He is also Creative Design Manager of the Consumer Lifestyle group. He oversees everyday design projects and strategic design initiatives, particularly for lighting, kitchen appliances and consumer lifestyle products.
Oscar Peña’s main function at Philips Design is Global Senior Creative Director for Lighting. He is also Creative Design Manager of the Consumer Lifestyle group. He oversees everyday design projects and strategic design initiatives, particularly for lighting, kitchen appliances and consumer lifestyle products.
Whether designing on a conceptual level or for the mass market, Pena’s investigation of ‘the essence of serious play’ and his focus on the human content of contemporary design are recurring themes in his work. A notable example is leading the Simplicity Event (Paris/Amsterdam 2005, London 2006, Hong Kong 2007).
Peña’s career has spanned a number of continents and design disciplines. He worked at Bill Stumpf & Associates and Seitz Yamamoto Moss in the US before joining Philips Design in 1987. Since then he has been involved in the design of numerous consumer products, including televisions, mobile phones, digital cameras, bank teller machines and kitchen appliances. He also headed the Philips Design Milan office, and was appointed head of the Man and Activity department in Eindhoven at the Design Academy Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in 1996. This appointment is primarily involved with the department’s design vision and direction.
Oscar Peña was born in Colombia. He trained at Xavier University, Bogota, Colombia where he received his Diploma Industrial Designer (1982). He completed his postgraduate studies in Visual Communications at Minneapolis College of Art and Design (1985). Memberships
- Head of department Man and Activity, Design Academy Eindhoven Recognitions
- Oscar Peña’s work has been published in global design magazines and books denoting design excellence: AXIS, ID Annual Design Review, Interior View, Mondo Materialis, WIRED. He has been in teams that have been awarded IF Design awards in 2003, and most recently in 2007, for Next Simplicity.
- He has lectured on design at a number of Universities and Conferences across Europe, Americas and Africa. He was a speaker at the 12th Design Indaba, Cape Town, South Africa in February 2008.
- In 2005 Oscar was part of an exhibition at the Design Museum in London ‘Under a Tenner’ with 15 top world designers.
Session: Wednesday, 28 April 1:30-12:15 - Listen, Creating value for the brand
