Masamichi Udagawa, Industrial Designer

Mr. Udagawa is a partner at Antenna Design New York Inc., which he co-founded with Sigi Moeslinger in 1997. Antennaâs design projects range from public and commercial to experimental and artistic, typically spanning object, interface, and environment. Among Antennaâs best-known projects are the design of New York City subway cars and ticket vending machines, JetBlue check-in kiosks, Bloomberg displays, and interactive environments, such as Power Flower, an installation in the windows of Bloomingdaleâs activated by passersby. Antennaâs user centered design approach helps understand human behavior, which is particularly important when designing the unfamiliar, elicited by new technology. Antennaâs work has won numerous awards, including recognition from Business Week/IDSA, I.D., Fast Company, and Wired magazines. In 2006 Mr. Udagawa and Ms. Moeslinger were named United States Artists Target Fellows in the Architecture and Design category. In 2008 Antenna won the National Design Award in Product Design from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Before forming Antenna, Mr. Udagawa ran a New York satellite studio of IDEO Product Development. Prior to that, he was a senior designer at Apple Computer Industrial Design Group in Cupertino, California, where he designed a number of products such as the PowerBook 5300/3400 series. Before that, he worked at Emilio Ambasz Design Group in New York. Before coming to the United States, Mr. Udagawa worked at the Yamaha Product Design Laboratory in Japan, where he designed electronic musical instruments, including the award-winning YS200 synthesizer. He holds a masterâs degree in industrial design from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a B.E. in industrial design from Chiba University in Japan. He joined the Yale faculty in 2005 and is currently senior critic in graphic design.