Puzzling Chaos

While most of us spend our days in search of solutions, our next speaker has made a career of creating new problems. The next installment of our When Chaos is Your Creative Director series features Enigmatist and Crossword Puzzle Constructor David Kwong. A mastermind of encryption with a History of Magic degree from Harvard, Kwong designs daily crossword puzzles for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal. He is also a secret code and puzzle consultant for a variety of hit shows, including ABC’s Deception and NBC’s Blindspot. In addition to serving as the Head Magic Consultant on the global hit film Now You See Me, Kwong and his Misdirectors Guild have worked on The Imitation Game, Ant-Man, and Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation.

For Kwong, untangling chaos is about identifying a signal in the noise. His “Wired to Solve” TED talk and spellbinding show “The Enigmatist”–which blend puzzles and magic–demonstrate his ability to playfully guide an audience through a bewildering labyrinth that they are subconsciously equipped to decode.

Join us for an evening of illusions. David’s performance and talk will take us on an expedition into the mind of a chaos maker—the art of encryption, creativity within constraints, and the process for designing magic. Together, we will investigate the line between influencing and manipulating user behavior through content and design.