This month’s question is How often do we change our own image? How do we communicate who we are to others?

In 1899 Albert Lion, Sr. and his brother Ben founded an embroidered emblem design and manufacturing company in a carriage house in downtown Baltimore. Since then, Lion Brothers has crafted apparel items for Nike, Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NHL, the Girl Scouts, the Boy Scouts and the Federal government. Now, as the world goes mobile, Lion CEO Suzy Ganz is re-abstracting and studying the basic components of what and how we craft our identities so that customers can create one-of-a-kind items for themselves. On it’s surface, this seems like a straightforward challenge. But within it is a rich and complex exploration how we communicate our identity and core essence as individuals and in groups.

Jan Baum is a veteran design educator who is passionate about creativity and design, the design process, and design thinking. Re-examining the role and reach of artists and designers and how creativity and design can be used to solve real world problems, she is engaged in interdisciplinary design from social design and sustainable design to digital design and rapid technologies. She engages a variety of digital technologies and phenomena, and their application to design, education, and society as a whole. She is the Director of the Object Lab, a digital fabrication lab, and the Director for both the Interdisciplinary Object Design and Metals programs at Towson University.