Scott Heigelmann
Meet the designer who is shaping the future of branding.

Scott Heigelmann is an internationally acclaimed designer, brand architect, and author. His work explores the confluence of design, technology, inclusion, and visual cognition. He is a founding partner of BigMind, a global creative consultancy that fuses intelligent design, adaptive branding, and advanced media to create radically inclusive brand experiences.
A Rubin Scholar, Heigelmann earned a bachelor’s degree in design from Montserrat College of Art, and completed his senior research in advanced visual studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Heigelmann continued his design education at Harvard University, where he is a Sert Council member at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Heigelmann’s executive thesis introduces the concept of adaptive branding, which posits that identity is a situational construct, and that brand identity programs must evolve to become fluid, intelligent, living, “adaptive” systems designed around a central cognitive inclusion model. He establishes the principles of adaptive branding, and its formal frameworks, which conclude that constellations of emblematic agents and interconnected perceptual triggers must be deployed by brands endeavoring to minimize selection pressures faced by their various publics, and to gain inclusion in the multiverse of microexchanges constellating today’s advanced media environments.
Prior to BigMind, Heigelmann served as principal creative director at Oracle, leading its Media Products Group in the design and branding of high-profile media products for Fortune 500 clients worldwide.
Heigelmann is a “40 Under 40” award recipient, a voting member of the GRAMMYs, a founding member of the Statue of Liberty Museum at Ellis Island, a panel judge of the MITX Awards, and a fellow at MoMA in New York City.
Past projects include design, brand identities, naming, and advanced media for believers such as Oracle, Ducati, The Grand, Y-3, Kanye West, Kennedy School, Brady Enterprises, Yale New Haven Health, YMCA, Mercato, Shrine, Encore Resorts, and a robust roster of commercial and cultural entities that embrace the power and inclusivity of design.
Heigelmann’s latest publications, Radically Inclusive Design and Laws of Adaptive Branding, are scheduled for release in 2019 by Harvard Square Research.
