Jeff Smith is co-founder, CEO and senior product strategist of LUNAR. He sees his role as one of shaping the firm’s design planning and management philosophies, keeping them in focus, and assuring that they are always working for the maximum benefit of LUNAR’s clients and employees. Jeff also co-founded Nova Cruz Products, Satellite Models and, most recently, T’emogique. These innovative new business opportunities have helped further LUNAR’s ability to provide a broad bandwidth of services, and give LUNAR the ability to create and invest in start-up and venturing opportunities. He also consistently builds close working relationships with companies having complementary services to further enable LUNAR’s successful participation within very broad and deep levels of complete product development programs.

Jeff has been personally credited with numerous design awards, and has been an active speaker for institutions and professional organizations such as Innotown, MIT’s Enterprise Forum, Wharton School, Art Center College of Design, Design Management Institute, Industrial Designers Society of America, and Association for Professional Design Firms.

Prior to starting LUNAR, Jeff was a founding principle of Interform (1983-1984) in Menlo Park, CA, and a project manager with GVO (1978-83) in Palo Alto, CA. Born and raised in Illinois, Jeff holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial design from the University of Illinois.

As COO, Gerard is responsible for overseeing LUNAR’s operations. With more than two decades of design experience, he has received recognition in annual design competitions sponsored by the Industrial Designers Society of America, ID Magazine, MDEA, the Chicago Athenaeum Museum, Appliance Manufacturer Magazine, as well as in numerous product design books.

Gerard has contributed articles to IDSA’s Innovation Magazine, Machine Design, DesignBiz, Plastics Design Forum and the Society of Plastics Engineers’ PD3-Challenging the Status Quo in Design. He has also been a speaker for the Industrial Designers Society of America, Society of Plastics Engineers, Design and Engineering Show, Art Center College of Design, Pratt Institute, San Jose State University and the Association of Professional Design Firms.

He has served as President and Chairman of the Board of the Association of Professional Design Firms, Chairman of the San Francisco chapter of the Industrial Designers Society of America, and is a Trustee of the Design Foundation. Gerard holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Southern California and a bachelor’s degree in industrial design from San Jose State University. Gerard gets his kicks from hitting the trails, whether it is for some cross country skiing or a long run.

John’s primary role is to build new programs for clients with the right innovation processes led by the right creative team to make a real difference for clients.  His experience includes managing the birth of successful products for Philips, Motorola, InFocus, and several startups.     Products developed under John’s management have been honored with accolades from the ID Magazine Design Annual, the Chicago Athenaeum Good Design Award, iF Hannover, PC Magazine’s Editor’s Choice Award, and IDSA’s Industrial Design Excellence Award.  

Born of an engineer and a mathematician, John is a natural problem solver, teacher and regular guest lecturer at Stanford University, where he earned a Master’s from the Joint Program in Design. Previously, John completed a bachelor’s degree in engineering at the University of Texas, Austin. With a voracious visual appetite, love of art and innate curiosity, John reflects 25-year-old LUNAR’s own trademark, “creativity that makes a difference.” He is also host of the industry podcast, “Icon-o-Cast,” and, in 2008, John and his team launched “Elements,” a sustainable design initiative to reduce the company’s environmental footprint both internally and abroad. On his own time, John can often be found at the helm of a sailboat on San Francisco Bay or pedaling up King’s Mountain Road.

Robert Howard heads engineering services for LUNAR. As LUNAR’s technology leader, Robert directs our engineering staff and innovation processes to deliver products that make a difference for our clients.

Under Robert’s direction since 1996, the engineering group is instrumental in delivering inventive products for leading consumer electronics and medical device companies in the Fortune 100 and startups alike.  His favorite projects require technological inventiveness and rigor to meet challenging end user expectations, whether they are life saving devices or consumer electronics products.

To better serve our medical clients, in 2004 Robert established LUNAR’s MED group, a rigorous practice and process with direct access to LUNAR’s own medical advisory board composed of doctors from nearby Stanford and VA hospitals.  The board includes practicing doctors with expertise in cardiology, interventional radiology, critical care and pulmonology among other fields.

Robert has a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford University, where he maintains contact through our advisory board and other avenues.  He also volunteers as an “industry coach” for upper division mechanical engineering classes in manufacturing at Stanford University When not at work, he is at play. In his spare time, Robert raises children and tinkers with technology.  He still has all his fingers and most of his wits.

As Design Director at LUNAR, Jeff is responsible for shaping the vision on projects and, as a key focus of his design philosophy, he is driven to explore and uncover opportunities for clients to create strong connections with their customers through compelling and innovative product solutions that surprise and delight. He is passionate about infusing the highest design ideals and ensuring design quality throughout all aspects of the process that brings a product from cradle-to-use and beyond.

Jeff  joined LUNAR in 1994  and has since received numerous awards for his work, including an Industrial Designer’s Society of America , the Chicago Athenaeum’s Good Design Award, and an iF Hannover award for projects like the Oral-B Cross Action toothbrush and Nova Cruz eX3 Electric Scooter. He contributed also to the Hewlett-Packard Pavilion Home PC, which won Best Overall Winner in Appliance Manufacturer Magazine’s Excellence in Design Competition. 

A California native from the San Francisco Bay Area, Jeff graduated with honors from the highly regarded Art Center College of Design in Pasadena with a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Design.  Jeff is passionate about practicing a sustainable and balanced life through yoga, West African drumming, and Sunday walks to his local farmer’s market.

With more than 22 years of professional design experience, Ken is a principal and director of industrial design at LUNAR. Ken is primarily involved in leading large-scale programs and managing the industrial design group to help ensure excellent client service and design quality.  He has been directly responsible for managing the long-term relationship with Hewlett-Packard’s Home Products Division, maker of the market-leading Pavilion line of personal computers.

Ken's design work has been featured in more than a dozen industrial design books, as well as magazines such as BusinessWeek, Time, Wall Street Journal, Axis, Form, Design Report and Metropolis. His work is also on permanent collection at the Smithsonian Institute, Chicago Athenaeum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, among others. Ken has been honored with more than 25 design awards while at LUNAR. 

Before joining LUNAR's founders as the first employee in 1986, Ken was an independent industrial designer in the Bay Area. He holds a bachelor's degree in industrial design from Ohio State University. 

Zoe’s role as Director of Communication Design is to provide creative leadership that helps our clients develop and translate their brands into amazing holistic experiences. She provides a fresh, open-minded and grounded perspective to the team, which leads to visually sophisticated design with a human and humane point of view. Zoe’s passion in developing design strategies that work across many platforms is what brought her to LUNAR, as our Communication Design practice is tightly integrated with all facets of our internal creative landscape. Zoe cultivates a multidisciplinary approach to telling LUNAR’s story, and thrives on collaborating with her visionary colleagues.

Zoe’s professional portfolio boasts a wide range of fashion, beauty, and lifestyle clients. Prior to joining LUNAR, she was the principal of her own design consultancy, Zoe Roman Design/Direction, in Brooklyn, NY, where she successfully executed and managed a multitude of packaging and design projects before moving into advertising art direction projects. Past work notably includes Revlon, Redken, L’Oreal, Donna Karan, DKNY, Target, Nanette Lepore, Langham Hotels International and Estee Lauder.

Zoe hails from South Florida, where she received her first degree in French Literature at USF. She then went on to study Communication Design and Graphic Design at Central St Martins in London. By day a designer, Zoe is also a declared professional aesthete, amateur taxidermist, and moderate vanguard.

Art joined LUNAR upon graduating from college in 1994 and has never looked back.  He holds a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and currently serves as co-Director of the Engineering group.  He has served as lead engineer and project manager on some of LUNAR's most successful projects including the Novint Falcon and the Ventus PROVENT Sleep Apnea Therapy device.  He currently holds 10 patents and counting and his projects have won dozens of awards from such institutions as the Chicago Athenaeum, ID Magazine, Red Dot, iF, and the IDSA’s Industrial Design Excellence Awards.

Art enjoys leading teams to success and values the interactions with team members that help push themselves, the design, and the process to new levels.  He also finds it rewarding to be part of the leadership team that helps steer LUNAR as a firm at the forefront of design.  His engineering philosophy is that one can never prototype early nor often enough, and that the most simple and elegant designs come only with persistent hard work.

Outside of work, Art is an avid but aging basketball player, who enjoys spending time with children (especially his!) and volunteering in the community when time allows.

Having joined LUNAR in 2001, Matt focuses LUNAR’s product development vision and process.  His past experience and passion, spanning LUNAR’s two primary disciplines of industrial design and mechanical engineering, enables him to manage team integration, advocate informed design, and streamline LUNAR’s technical operations.  Matt has managed development programs for award-winning products and systems for companies including Abbott Labs/TheraSense (advanced blood analyzer), Hewlett-Packard, Seagate, SanDisk, Pantech, Siemens and others.

Matt’s professional history includes experience with Visteon Automotive, Johnson Controls, and Nihon Parametric Technology Corporation in Tokyo, Japan.  Matt graduated from the University of Michigan with a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a BFA in Industrial Design.

Matt has recently finished managing one of LUNAR’s most complex development programs, creating an important healthcare product for a Fortune 100 company.   The project involved managing all of LUNAR’s internal teams as well as several outside specialists – and teaching rapid product development processes to a company entrenched in bureaucratic core technology manufacturing.

LUNAR Hong Kong connects our clients around the world to the vibrant energy and resources of Asia. Managed by LUNAR veteran Andrew Zee, our office in Hong Kong fluidly extends our practice directly to the cultural centers and manufacturing floors in China, Malaysia, Taiwan and beyond. Andrew’s ability to define successful products and get them to market makes him a perfect liaison between LUNAR and the Asian market. 

A native Hong Kong son who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in product design from Stanford University in California, Andrew has fluency in both Chinese and American language, culture and practice. He brings with him over 10 years of experience managing LUNAR’s product design engineering practice to the operations of the Hong Kong office.

Andrew has been project manager for the successful HP Pavilion home PCs since their inception and was responsible for all CAD and engineering development. As LUNAR’s low-volume manufacturing expert, he brought high design to products for clients such as Molecular Dynamics and Coherent Medical.

Matthis has worked with international design consultancies such as IDEO in Boston and Philips Design in the Netherlands. While at designafairs in Munich, he held a range of positions including design manager for Siemens Mobile and Xelibri, and director of strategy & consulting.

He directed and participated in several design programs for international clients such as Mercedes Benz, Philips, Siemens, Xelibri, and Audi. He taught design classes at the Design Academy Offenbach (Germany) and at the University of Applied Science in Munich.

Roman has held positions at international design consultancies such as Modus Design in Stuttgart, LUNAR in California, frog design in New York and designafairs/Siemens in Munich. At these posts, Roman directed and particpated in award-winning design programs for clients like Sony, Siemens, Microsoft, HP, Motorola, LG Electronics, GE, Proctor & Gamble, Coca Cola, Xelibri and T-Mobile.

In 2001 he co-founded the American design collective designRAW and in 2005 the German group dialog05 to explore design on a more conceptual and idea-driven level. He has taught several design work- shops at the Design University in Lund, Sweden and holds a Bachelor of Science with honors in product design from Art Center College of Design (Europe) in Switzerland.