Kai Krause

KAI KRAUSE has a doctorate in philosophy, a master's in image processing, a patent for interface concepts, a Clio for the first Star Trek movie and a Davis Medal by the Royal British Photographical Society. Time magazine selected him as one of the 50 most influential thinkers of the next decade. Born 1957 in Germany, he studied languages and math at a Gymnasium and the music conservatory for classical piano. In 1976 he left for California, consulted on synthesizers and vocoders on about 30 records and movies. He sold his entire machinery to Neil Young in 1982 and over the next 20 years started several software companies to build computer graphics tools. Over 20 products from Kai's Power Tools for Photoshop to Bryce (and many more like Poser, Raydream, InfiniD, Painter, LivePicture, Convolver) came out of MetaTools and MetaCreations, the effects being ubiquitous everywhere on CD covers, MTV videos, the Oscars and the Mars Mission, Issey Myake clothing or his Absolut Kai ads. The real success of the software was in pioneering revolutionary interfaces, deeper concepts of realtime interaction, and aethetic designs of organic shapes, rounded edges, soft shadows and layers which are now many years later standard parts of OSX and XP. Edge readers know him as a TED Fellow, DEMO God and Billionaire Dinner guest.