Selected Work — John Alderman

Strategy, communication, and design studio focused on helping organizations make sense of change across finance, healthcare, and technology.

Strategic lead for Schwab's 140-person in-house creative agency during a period of unprecedented growth: client assets from $2T to $7.8T, active accounts from 9M to 33M.

Director of the content discipline for California. Clients included Intel, Visa, Disney, Kaiser Permanente, PG&E, Wells Fargo, McKesson, and Yahoo!.

Creative lead for the San Francisco office. Clients included Mozilla Firefox, Sears, and Women's Sports Foundation.

Strategy and editorial for Air Canada, Shu Uemura, and Volkswagen across Asia Pacific. Led creation of a five-language Air Canada website across Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

The music industry was still trying to stop what was already happening when this book came out. An account of the first structural collapse of music as a packaged product. Who saw it coming, who didn't, and what it revealed about how entrenched industries misread change. New York Times Notable Book. New York Times Best Books Since 2000, 2025.

Before computing disappeared into seamless interfaces, this book made its history physical again. Fifty computers photographed by Mark Richards. Design Observer Book of the Year.

Computing was escaping the screen, but design methods had not yet caught up. This book built the frameworks for thinking across senses, environments, and embodied interaction.

A framework for forces that were only beginning to reshape video culture. Named nine properties of something that wouldn't fully exist for another five years.

Ten reflections on the graphical interface as it became the operating environment of modern life — no longer just making sense of the world, but shaping what sense is possible.

A critical review of the Rams retrospective at SFMOMA that reframes him as a systems designer as much as a functionalist. Setting the standard for what becomes normal and intuitive is a position of responsibility. Later used as teaching material at Pratt.

A recurring event (each with a zine) where ideas are worked out in public — each issue organized around a single theme and developed through conversation, frameworks, and a setting that's as social as it is thoughtful.

Built for a moment when the dystopic seems to be the only available mode — a broader tool and practice for imagining change and how it actually happens. In development.

Coaching senior capstone teams through design and strategy — helping students translate what they already know into shared frameworks and coordinated action.

Designed and facilitated workshops for healthcare futures teams using AI-assisted prototyping to develop concepts as narrative prototypes — tools for exploring implications and shifting dynamics, not just features.

Delivered workshops for small business owners in the Bayview district, enabling entrepreneurs to apply AI directly to real business problems.

Participant in an international exhibition exploring multisensory experience and design.

A keynote on the forces reshaping video distribution, delivered a year before the iPhone launched.

Interviews on music, technology, and digital culture, primarily around Sonic Boom.