About Alvin Chan
Alvin Chan is a renowned global brand leader, former Global Creative Director at NIKE, and the founder and principal of the brand design agency Superlarge.
With over 30 years of experience across marketing, design, and innovation, Alvin has held pivotal creative leadership roles at NIKE, Cheil Worldwide / Samsung, G-Star RAW, and TBWA. Most recently, as Global Executive Creative Director at Cheil Worldwide, he led the global rollout of Samsung’s flagship devices—driving award-winning digital experiences, including the acclaimed Samsung Galaxy launches, which earned three Webby Awards.
At NIKE, Alvin played a key role in shaping the brand’s global presence in football. As Global Creative Director for Nikefootball, he helped cement NIKE’s dominance in the sport through groundbreaking brand design and immersive experiences.
Alvin also served as Global Creative Director at G-Star RAW, the premium denim label, where he unified marketing and creative strategies to launch several successful award winning global campaigns.
Spanning both brand and agency sides, Alvin’s career is defined by his ability to merge strategic thinking with bold creative execution. His dedication to the craft has also been recognized within the design community—most notably through his role as President of the Dutch chapter of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI).
Today, as the driving force behind Superlarge, Alvin leads a multidisciplinary team delivering visionary work for clients including ASICS, Samsung, Columbia, and Polaroid.
What is your vision on our creative industry? What are exciting innovations that impacts your work as well?
The creative industry is in a moment of transformation. As creatives, our role has shifted—from imagining distant futures to responding to real-time possibilities shaped by AI and emerging tech. Tools once out of reach now offer instant access to visual storytelling, web development, and even generative thinking. But in this acceleration, something vital is being lost: the hunger to explore.
Social media and AI risk flattening creative expression, feeding us sameness instead of difference. Original voices and personal perspectives are becoming rare. That’s why now, more than ever, we must push beyond the algorithms. We must take risks, cross borders—both literal and creative—and step into the unknown.
My keynote is a call to reignite that fire. It’s about using discomfort as a compass, testing the boundaries of your own creative vision, and discovering who you really are in the process. Because on the other side of uncertainty lies growth, and the future belongs to those willing to leap.
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Keynote
Alvin Chan
Pressure Is a Privilege: Designing systems that unleashes creativity
We all talk about user-centered design. But what about the humans inside the systems that create those designs?
In this keynote, Alvin Chan takes you behind the scenes of some of the most intense creative environments on the planet — from short-window global athlete shoots, to hierarchical brand teams, to siloed global tech structures — to reveal how pressure interacts with people and systems in unexpected ways.
From the highest levels of success to the brink of burnout, Alvin shares his journey of learning how pressure isn’t the enemy — the systems around us are. Through a series of memorable case studies, he illustrates how thoughtful frameworks, human judgment, and intentional conditions can turn pressure into a catalyst for better decisions, deeper trust, and more sustainable creative output.
This talk isn’t about tools or tactics; it’s about designing the conditions under which creativity thrive, even when time is compressed, stakes are high, and expectations are immense. You’ll walk away with mental models and principles you can apply immediately — whether you’re shaping user experiences, leading teams, influencing culture, or crafting strategy under uncertainty.
Ultimately, this keynote is an invitation to reimagine pressure as a privilege that reveals the systems we live in — and the systems we can design for better human outcomes.
