Karin Carolina Hibma

Design thinking is a potent strategic ingredient in

any worthwhile endeavor. – Karin Hibma

Karin Hibma has been involved in design throughout her career. She has a first hand understanding of the power of design and visual thinking in our economy and culture.

As a strategy partner in : : CRONAN : : since its founding in 1980, Hibma has concentrated on incorporating smart design processes and finding "the big idea" inherent in every client's projects. As Cronan Design grew, Hibma became the Managing Director and CFO of the company, overseeing a combined team of twenty-two designers and production assistants and managing business relationships with clients from Levi Strauss & Co to Estee Lauder, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and

from Silicon Valley.

Hibma focuses on naming and strategic brand identities, deep thinking for and with clients, managing client relationships, consulting with IDE, an international organization concentrating on ending rural poverty, and serves on the advisory council of the International Design Conference in Aspen (IDCA).

Hibma also founded and is the president of Cronan Artefact, a product development, manufacturing and marketing company. Incorporated in 1991 to market the Walking Man line of apparel designed by Michael Cronan and Hibma, they won International Design Magazine's 1992 Consumer Product Gold Award and 1993 Honorable Mention presented at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, New York.
Hibma completed her BA in Fine Art at California State University Sacramento and became a freelance design researcher for Communications Design, Inc. She founded and managed her own creative research company, Design Resource, to work with artists, photographers and filmmakers on advertising, commercial and documentary projects.

Hibma was commissioned in 1978 by The Burdick Group to research and write Creativity: The Human Resource, a major traveling exhibition funded by Chevron, examining the creative process of contemporary Americans who'd made major contributions in the arts and sciences to document their creative insights and define their creative process. The exhibition list included artists John Cage, Judy Chicago, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Lawrence Halprin and scientists Margaret Mead, Linus Pauling, and Jonas Salk.

Karin and Michael live in the Berkeley hills and have two sons. Nick Cronan is a successful industrial designer and Shawn is a Sculpture and Furniture major at California College of the Arts.