Eric Karjaluoto

Eric Karjaluoto is a Canadian designer, entrepreneur, writer, and former painter. He is a founding partner at smashLAB, a strategic interactive agency located in Vancouver, Canada.
Background
Karjaluoto is of Finnish descent born in Prince George, British Columbia. He graduated from the Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver in 1995. smashLAB gradually built up a roster of local clients and eventually moved the office to Vancouver in 2004.
In 2007—inspired in part by the Oscar-winning Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth—Karjaluoto and his partner spearheaded "Design Can Change", an effort to unite designers to address climate change. TIME Magazine selected Design Can Change for inclusion in its annual Design 100—a list of "the people and ideas behind today's most influential design".
Writing
Karjaluoto's blog "offers critical thought and discussion of topics relating to communication design and designers". One post in particular, titled "9 to 5 = average" sparked a flame war and prompted a new media organization to create a live panel discussion based on the topic.
His articles have been republished by web publications such as Taxi Design and Creative Review. He has also written articles for .net Magazine and Applied Arts, and excerpts of his white paper, "A Primer on Social Media", were published in the May 2008 issue of Advertising Age.
Authored the book "Speak Human" that tackles the topic of design and communication from the point of view of the ways in which people interact with the objects around us. In it 'Karjaluoto lays out several methods in which small companies can retain the hearts of customers.'

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