Future of NYC Design 2026: A Guide to NYC's New AI-Design Conference
Future of NYC Design 2026 brings designers to Brooklyn's Sanders Studios on May 16 for keynotes, a Design × Dev hackathon, on-stage portfolio reviews, and more.
Future of NYC Design lands in Brooklyn on Saturday, May 16, 2026, bringing 300+ designers, technologists, and creative leaders together for a single day at Sanders Studios in Clinton Hill. The conference fills a meaningful gap in the city's design calendar — a NYC-rooted, single-day gathering focused on the intersection of design, AI, and creative practice — and arrives during the overlap of NYCxDESIGN week (May 14–20) and Pulse NYC's AI Week (May 11–17).
Sanders Studios · 525 Waverly Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11238 · Open in Google Maps →
Why Future of NYC Design matters for the city's design community
Organized by 241 Members and Vibescape, with FIT's Cynda Media Lab providing institutional support, the conference is positioned as a community-anchored gathering for NYC's design ecosystem. Community partners include NYCxDESIGN, NYC AI Week (Pulse NYC), the Asian Creative Foundation, and Friends of Figma NYC — a cross-section of the city's design and creative-tech communities backing the program.
The event takes place in Sanders Studios' Studio 3, a flexible production space in Clinton Hill that has hosted shoots, screenings, and creative gatherings for years. With doors opening at noon and a closing reception running until 8 PM, the conference packs a full day of programming including keynotes, panel discussions, lightning talks, a roundtable, a live hackathon, on-stage portfolio reviews, and an awards ceremony.
The opening keynote: AI in design education
The day opens at 12:30 PM with a keynote from Christie Shin and C.J. Yeh, both leading figures at FIT's Cynda Media Lab. Shin teaches at FIT's Communication Design department; Yeh serves as Creative Director of Cynda Media Lab and has spent more than two years integrating generative AI tools into FIT's curriculum.
Their session draws from active classroom practice — what's working, what students are building, and how AI is shifting the foundational skills designers learn. For attendees thinking about how to integrate AI into their own teams or learning paths, the keynote offers a grounded view from inside a working program.
A panel on the future of design careers
At 2 PM, the Future of Design Careers panel brings together three designers with strikingly different career arcs:
- Siddiq Nasar, Creative Director at IBM
- Shandy Tsai, Senior Product Designer at Duolingo and co-founder of the Asian Creative Foundation
- Lucas Rizzotto, an independent creative technologist whose work has appeared at TED, Sundance, Tribeca, and SXSW
The conversation spans enterprise design leadership, growth-product practice, and independent studio work — a useful breadth for designers thinking about their next move or considering how to expand their practice.
Live portfolio reviews and the Design × Dev hackathon
From 3 to 6 PM, the conference runs two of its most distinctive programs in parallel:
- Live on-stage portfolio reviews — open to ticketed attendees, with feedback from senior designers across the speaker lineup, including practitioners from Cisco, IBM, Duolingo, and Cynda Media Lab.
- Design × Dev hackathon — a three-hour build challenge focused on AI-tool integration, judged live during the awards ceremony.
For students and early-career designers, the portfolio review track offers something rare: dedicated time with hiring designers in a single afternoon.
Lightning talks: practitioners across product and platform
At 4:15 PM, the lightning talks bring short, focused presentations from designers across the industry:
- Soo Yun Kim, Principal Designer at Cisco
- Lee-Sean Huang, Director of Operations at AIGA
- Mustafa Bağdatlı, Google
- Michelle Chiu, PayPal
Lightning talks are often the format with the highest density of fresh perspectives — short enough to take risks, long enough to deliver a real idea.
"Who Gets to Build?" — the day's marquee roundtable
The 5:10 PM roundtable, "Who Gets to Build?", is moderated by Chelsea Acheampong, COO of Her Rising. The session focuses on access, equity, and pathways into AI-native design work — a timely conversation as the cost of entry to AI-creative tooling shifts and new questions emerge about who participates in shaping design's next chapter.
Awards ceremony and closing reception
The day's awards ceremony begins at 6:15 PM, recognizing standout work across the Future of NYC Design Awards categories. A closing keynote follows at 6:50 PM, and the conference winds down with a reception from 7:15 to 8:00 PM.
Tickets, schedule, and venue
Date: Saturday, May 16, 2026
Doors: 12:00 PM
Closing reception: 7:15 – 8:00 PM
Venue: Sanders Studios, 525 Waverly Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11238 (Clinton Hill)
Transit: G or C train to Clinton-Washington Aves
Ticket tiers:
- Student / Emerging — $50 (ID required, application-gated)
- General Admission — $120
- Supporter — $200 (limited)
- Livestream — $40
The Student / Emerging tier is particularly notable for designers earlier in their careers: it includes access to on-stage portfolio reviews and the full day of programming.
Plan your day
Future of NYC Design 2026 is one of several design events landing during NYCxDESIGN week. For designers building careers in the city, the combination of a focused single-day program, a strong speaker lineup, and dedicated time for portfolio reviews and a hackathon makes May 16 a meaningful addition to the calendar.
