Hannu Pöppönen is a 52 year-old journalist, author and design professor at School of Art and Design of Guangdong University of Technology. He has been working at the university since 2015. Until the year 2018, he worked as visiting professor and after that as a professor, teaching for design and art history, introductory courses to design and academic writing. Part of his work is to edit the school’s English column of the university journal. He was working for 18 years at the biggest newspaper in Finland at the cultural section, responsible for design and architecture criticism. Since 2014, he has been working as a freelancer journalist, writing about design for various media in Finland. He also has published books in Finland. The latest is called Designkuplia (Design bubbles), that was published by the University of Art and Design. It is a critical book about contemporary Finnish design. He was writing for example about the problems with internationalizing Finnish design, about branding it in a new way and importance of storytelling in branding. 

Anu Puustinen studied at University of Art and Design Helsinki and TU Delft Netherlands before graduating as Master of Science from Aalto University in 2004. Before starting her own office with Ville Hara she worked at Helsinki City Building Control Department and Helsinki City Planning Department of SARC Architects. On the side of working in her own office she has been teaching at Aalto University. Anu is passionate about architecture and wants to develop her projects to be perfect, working hard even on smallest details. She has impeccable taste and she doesn't give up until she is fully satisfied with the results.

Ari Korolainen is a Finnish architect and designer who was one of the first designers who used recycled materials in his designs. In 1985, he started to make cases and stationery products of recycled cardboard. Today he also uses recycled leather commonly in his designs. Good design and environmentally friendly materials can be seen in his Private Case stationery collection. Now, 30 years later, Private Case is a large collection of stationery products and Korolainen is known as Mr Private Case. Furniture design is his another ambition. 

Tapani Hyvönen graduated as an industrial designer from the present Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture. In 1976, he founded the design agency “Destem Ltd.” and was co-founder of ED-Design Ltd. in 1990. He has served as CEO and president of both agencies until 2013. He has been a visiting professor at Guangdong University of Technology in Guangzhou and Donghua University in Shanghai, China. His many award-winning designs, for which e.g. he was honoured with the Industrial Designer of the Year Award of the Finnish Association of Industrial Designers TKO in 1991 and the Pro Finnish Design Award by the Design Forum Finland, are part of the collections of the Design Museum Helsinki and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York. Tapani Hyvönen was an advisory board member of the Design Leadership Programme at the University of Art and Design Helsinki 1989–2000, and a board member of the World Design Organization (formerly Icsid) 1999–2003 and 2009–2013. He was president of the Finnish Association of Designers Ornamo 2009–2012 and a board member of the Finnish Design Museum 2011–2017.