Helen Walters is the head of curation at TED, where she has the privilege of overseeing the work of an absurdly talented group of specialist curators and deep thinkers to bring the very sharpest minds and ideas to the TED stage.

In his film "Mars et Avril," Martin Villeneuve brings his sci-fi romance graphic novel to glorious life.

Naming science as his chief inspiration, Mathieu Lehanneur shows a selection of his ingenious designs -- an interactive noise-neutralizing ball, an antibiotic course in one layered pill, asthma treatment that reminds kids to take it, a living air filter, a living-room fish farm and more.

Saki Mafundikwa founded the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts, ZIVA, a Bauhaus-style school focused on African heritage. (“Vigital” denotes visual arts taught using digital tools.) It's the first graphic design and new media college in the nation, and he wanted his students to understand the power of design--and in particular to understand ...

Bill Moggridge, director of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, has died. He was 69. Moggridge, who designed the first laptop computer and was the co-founder of the design firm IDEO, was an enormously influential figure in the worlds of design and technology, beloved by all who knew him. In fact, what’s most noticeabl...

Paula Scher looks back at a life in design (she's done album covers, books, the Citibank logo ...) and pinpoints the moment when she started really having fun. Look for gorgeous designs and images from her legendary career.

Over the past week, we’ve noticed a lot of TED-related news items in the ether. Here, some highlights: Chip Kidd (watch his TED Talk) has just released a new book: a how-to guide to graphic design for kids. Read The New York Times’ Q&A with him in which he says, “I was utterly floored [when an editor wrote me about the book idea]. I sai...

When art historian and scholar of Arabic script Bahia Shehab was asked to create a piece commemorating the centenary of the first exhibition on Islamic art in Europe, little did she know that the Egyptian revolution would ultimately transform her into a street artist and activist with a powerful and subtle voice of protest. How did your work ...

At Serious Play 2008, astrophysicist George Smoot shows stunning new images from deep-space surveys, and prods us to ponder how the cosmos -- with its giant webs of dark matter and mysterious gaping voids -- got built this way.

Chip Kidd doesn't judge books by their cover, he creates covers that embody the book -- and he does it with a wicked sense of humor. In this deeply felt (and deeply hilarious) talk, he shares the art and the philosophy behind his cover designs. (This talk is from The Design Studio session at TED2012, guest-curated by Chee Pearlman and David Rock...

The Book. Few things are as universal, as ubiquitous and as transformative. On this Book Lovers Day, we’ve compiled talks that examine all the facets that make books great. Do you judge a book by its cover, like Chip Kidd, or get absorbed into a compelling narrative like Andrew Stanton? Were you taken to new lands by foreign authors like Lis...

The Open Translation Project has a global family of over 18,000 volunteers. But for the Dekkers -- living in Sde Warburg, Israel -- the OTP family isn’t a figure of speech. They’ve made translating TED Talks into Hebrew a true family affair. Husband and wife Ido and Tal Dekkers have worked on more than 2,000 translations between them. Ido...

Zimbabwean designer Saki Mafundikwa has a powerful vision for the future of African art. As the founder of the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts (ZIWA), Mafundikwa is working to bring African art back to its roots. ZIWA, the first school of graphic design in Zimbabwe, and one of the first schools to emphasize the use of digital technology t...

David McCandless turns complex data sets (like worldwide military spending, media buzz, Facebook status updates) into beautiful, simple diagrams that tease out unseen patterns and connections. Good design, he suggests, is the best way to navigate information glut -- and it may just change the way we see the world.

Flags are one of the simplest yet most powerful pieces of design ever conceived. They can make us swell with pride, burn with hatred -- and even inspire people to die or kill in their name, says vexillologist Michael Green. Take a brief walk through history as Green explores the symbolic fervor behind flags that unify and divide, inviting us to ...

Early one morning, hours before the sun would rise, Lebanese-Egyptian artist, activist and historian Bahia Shehab was alone on the streets of Cairo, spray-painting a stenciled message that spoke out against the stripping of veiled women. It's a campaign she discussed in “A thousand times no,” her inspiring TED Talk, and it was not only a beaut...

Book designer Chip Kidd knows all too well how often we judge things by first appearances. In this hilarious, fast-paced talk, he explains the two techniques designers use to communicate instantly -- clarity and mystery -- and when, why and how they work. He celebrates beautiful, useful pieces of design, skewers less successful work, and shares ...

About this event: Problems are everyday more complex and require a real collaborative work to get solved. The Design Department at Universidad Iberoamericana has been encouraging out of the box thinking providing new learning models for innovation processes. Design represents a viable way in which NGO´s and companies can innovate and compete in the local scene...

Tricia Walker shares a snapshot of this sketchbook page inspired by Chip Kidd's TEDTalk: Check out more graphic note-taking from TED and TEDx events on our Pinterest board "Speak Now" -- and if you've got your own great notes from watching a TEDTalk, share them in the comments below!

Welcome the class of TED2017 Fellows! Representing 12 countries, one tribal nation and an incredible range of disciplines, this year's Fellows are all leaders in their fields who constantly find new ways to collaborate and bring about positive change. Among those selected are an Ecuadorian neurobiologist working to uncover the neural circuit...

Artist + creative director + Islamic art historian

Roman Mars is obsessed with flags -- and after you watch this talk, you might be, too. These ubiquitous symbols of civic pride are often designed, well, pretty terribly. But they don't have to be. In this surprising and hilarious talk about vexillology -- the study of flags -- Mars reveals the five basic principles of flag design and shows why h...

Artist, activist and historian Bahia Shehab tells Alison Prato how she speaks out against social and political injustice in her adopted city of Cairo. Early one morning, hours before the sun was due to rise, Lebanese-Egyptian artist Bahia Shehab was alone on the streets of Cairo, spray-painting a stenciled message that spoke out against the s...

It’s called second-skilling: developing your skills for a new job while you’re still working. The Asian city-state is investing in its citizens so they can stay flexible and employed, says online learning advocate Barbara Oakley. In 1965, unemployment in Singapore was in the double digits. Workforce literacy was 57 percent. Singapore could have...

At TED 2011, Sunni Brown encouraged doodling everywhere – classrooms and meeting rooms included. “The doodle … engages all four learning modalities simultaneously, with the possibility of an emotional experience,” she says in her classic talk. Yes, it’s proven that doodling helps you remember things more efficiently. Graphic notetaking is...

Graphic designer

A 12-year-old boy in a Stormtrooper helmet – and a tutu. A hulking man wearing a pre-Raphaelite collar of Barbie dolls. A bride standing wistfully in a garden, her face obscured by a wrestling mask. Russian photo-based artist Uldus Bakhtiozina’s whimsical and surreal images -- which feature models as well as herself -- raise an eyebrow at id...

Aris Venetikidis is fascinated by the maps we draw in our minds as we move around a city -- less like street maps, more like schematics or wiring diagrams, abstract images of relationships between places. How can we learn from these mental maps to make better real ones? As a test case, he remakes the notorious Dublin bus map.

Books can entertain, sucking you like a tornado into incredible new worlds. Books can teach, giving you a richer understanding of time periods, people and ideas you’ve never been exposed to. But books can do so much more. In today’s talk, TED's own Lisa Bu introduces us to the concept of “comparative reading,” the practice of reading book...

I am often asked, “What inspires you?” and “When you have a creative block, how do you unblock it?” The unhelpful answer to the first question is that I can be inspired by just about everything, both good and bad. But when you have a problem to solve -- whether it’s fixing a leak, keeping deer out of your yard, or trying to mend a broken relatio...