Design leadership is at an inflection point. This conference is where the conversation happens.

There’s a version of the design leadership conversation that happens on stage at most conferences. It’s polished, optimistic, and careful. Design is a strategic asset. Design has a seat at the table. Design drives growth.

Then there’s the version that happens in the hallway. That one sounds different. It sounds like a CDO explaining that their team is being asked to do twice the work with the same headcount because AI was supposed to fill the gap. It sounds like a VP of packaging admitting that the approval process they built five years ago can’t handle the volume of concepts their team now generates in a week. It sounds like a newly appointed design leader at a food company trying to figure out which of the 14 “urgent” portfolio renovations actually matters.

THE FUTURE OF… conference, May 11-13 in Chicago, is built for that second conversation. The roster isn’t a speaker lineup. It’s a working group of people who are navigating the same inflection point from different positions across different industries. And 3D Color is proud to be a sponsor.

The design leaders in the room

The confirmed speakers read like a cross-section of where design authority sits today and where it’s heading.

Phil Duncan, Global Design Officer at Procter & Gamble, has shaped how the world’s largest CPG company thinks about design as a function. His perspective on portfolio governance, brand consistency at scale, and the role of physical execution in a company managing thousands of SKUs carries weight that extends far beyond P&G’s own brands. Bob Jennings, 3D Color’s CEO, will interview Duncan on stage in what should be one of the more candid design leadership conversations of the year.

Chuck Jones has held the Chief Design Officer title at five different companies and currently leads design at GE Healthcare. He brings a perspective most CPG-focused conferences don’t get: what happens when the stakes of design decisions aren’t shelf placement but patient outcomes, and what design governance looks like when regulatory and clinical requirements shape every choice.

Phil Gilbert was the first person to hold the title of Design General Manager at IBM. His tenure redefined how a 100-year-old technology company thought about design as a business discipline, not a service function. The lessons from building a design practice inside an engineering-led enterprise are directly relevant to packaging teams trying to elevate design’s role inside operations-led CPG companies.

Matthieu Aquino, the newly appointed CDO at Kraft Heinz, represents the next wave. Taking the design leadership seat at one of the world’s largest food companies during a period of aggressive portfolio renovation and brand reinvestment is a different challenge than inheriting a mature design function. His perspective on building versus inheriting is one the industry needs to hear.

Mark Wilson, Global Design Editor at Fast Company, adds the lens of which design stories actually break through and why. For leaders trying to build design’s profile internally, Wilson’s editorial perspective on what makes a design narrative compelling outside the organization is practical, not just interesting.

The technology thread: AI as an organizational question

Technology isn’t the center of this conference, but it runs through every conversation. The question isn’t whether AI matters to design. It’s whether organizations are set up to do anything coherent with it.

Jason Hauer, CEO of HauerX Holdings, moderates a panel on Tuesday, May 12 at 11:30 AM with Anthony Wolf, VP of AI Activation and Process Reengineering at Canadian Tire, and Roger Rohatgi, Chief AI Officer at ChaiOne. Wolf has led both product development and AI implementation inside the same retailer, which gives him a view most speakers don’t have: what it actually looks like when the same organization tries to use AI systemically rather than experimentally. Rohatgi, formerly BP’s first Chief Design Officer, has spent 25 years at the intersection of design, technology, and enterprise change.

The framing of their session is pointed: how do organizations move from individuals writing prompts to something that actually changes how the enterprise operates? Most haven’t made that jump. The panel is about what’s in the way.

Brand, IP, and the narrative layer

Pete Blackshaw needs no introduction in CPG. After leading digital globally for Nestle and serving as CEO of Cintrifuse, he founded BrandRank.ai, which monitors how brands appear across AI-powered search engines. His work sits at the intersection of brand reputation and technology that most organizations haven’t fully reckoned with yet: the reality that AI-generated answers about your brand are increasingly the first impression consumers get, and those answers aren’t governed by your media plan or your packaging.

Stephen Baird, one of the most respected IP attorneys in the country, brings the legal dimension that most design and AI conversations skip entirely. When AI is involved in the creative process, the ownership and protection questions get complicated fast. For companies investing heavily in design as a competitive asset, the IP conversation isn’t optional.

Why the cross-industry mix matters

The most interesting signal from this year’s roster is the range. John Gleason, the conference organizer, has built a room where Canadian Tire and Kraft Heinz share a stage. Where GE Healthcare’s design governance model meets P&G’s. Where an IP attorney and an AI officer and a Fast Company editor are all reacting to the same provocation.

Gleason has also been in conversation with design and innovation leaders at PayPal, Chase, Sam’s Club, Walmart, Verizon, Newell Brands, 3M, and others.

For packaging and design leaders inside CPG, the value of that cross-pollination is direct. The playbook for managing design complexity, elevating physical execution, and integrating new technology into established workflows isn’t going to come from inside CPG alone. The organizations that expose themselves to how adjacent industries are solving the same structural problems will move faster than the ones that stay in their lane.

Three days in Chicago

THE FUTURE OF… runs May 11-13. The conversations will range from design governance at global scale to the practical mechanics of AI deployment to the legal boundaries of creative IP. The common thread is that every speaker on this stage is making real decisions inside real organizations, and the pressures they’re navigating are the same ones facing packaging and design teams across the industry.

3D Color is a proud sponsor. It’s not too late to join -- use code FRIENDSOF3DCOLOR for 50% off registration at thefutureof-conference.com. If you’re attending, come find Bob Jennings or catch Jason Hauer’s AI panel on Tuesday.

If you’d like to connect with our team at the event or want to talk about what these leadership and technology shifts mean for your packaging program, reach out to bob.jennings@3dcolor.com.