Image: Scaffolding art installation: “Monk Parakeets with Mourning Doves and Red Wings” for the Downtown Alliance's Re:Construct project. 2011, New York, NY
Indie Creative Director Focused on Science Communications
Profile in Forbes: "Karen Ingram: From Painting to Synthetic Biology, The Un-Career Path Personified" By Jessica Shortall
KAREN INGRAM is a creative director, designer, and artist who uses her skill set to promote scientific awareness. With an origin in painting and textile design, Ingram's professional experience has traversed the arenas of digital design and art direction, creative strategy, event curation, and newly, synthetic biology. Specialties and specific areas of interest include:
Public Engagement
Unicorn Mosaic made from genetically engineered phosphorescent bacteria at SXSW, 2013
Public engagement plays a major role in how technologies evolve. Having been involved with SXSW for fifteen years, I've seen that first hand.
Four years ago, I joined David Leibowitz as a co-organizer of the Brooklyn-based science event series, the Empiricist League. The experience of working on the Empiricist League has given me a great appreciation for the challenges implicit in communicating about science, as well as the breadth of opportunities yet to be tapped.
Synthetic Biology & DIY Bio
Image from "Biobuilder: Synthetic Biology in the Lab"
Through the DIY Bio world, I became interested in synthetic biology. My first inkling that a designer could have an impact in this emerging technology, was when I sat in on Natalie Kuldell's "Picture This" bacterial photography lab at MIT. I became interested in the graphic representation of the microbial process as well as the experience in the lab. This trip down the rabbit hole eventually led to an amazing collaboration that resulted in Buibuilder: Synthetic Biology in the Lab by Natalie Kuldell, Rachel Bernstein, Katie Hart, and myself.
Creative Strategy
Image from NYU SHERP 2015 Entrepreneurial Journalism course, team "Collaboratory"
Messaging, color palettes, logo marks, brand guidelines, illustrations, infographics... creative strategy is an important element to any communication. Whether it's unpacking an exciting advancement in technology and reframing it for a non-science audience, creating a memorable logo mark that expresses an idea simply, or working with students to package their ideas as something to pitch to a potential investor... creative interpretations and distillations are a necessary vector for successful communication.
“Karen makes our pencil crayons sad because they sit in the closet waiting for the day we’ll do something as sweet with them as she does with hers.”