Michael Lanz

Managing Director at designaffairs

Michael Lanz is an experienced product designer and design strategist.

After completing his studies at the University of Wuppertal, specializing in product design, he began his professional career in the design department at Siemens AG in 1991, which was hived off as designaffairs GmbH in 1997.

After a management buy-out, Michael was one of four owners/managing directors of designaffairs GmbH from 2007 to mid-2018. By the end of July 2018, designaffairs GmbH became part of Accenture.

In parallel to being a managing partner at designaffairs, Michael was a lecturer for technical design at the TU Dresden in 2007/08 and 2010/11 and head of the institute of “Product & Transportation Design” at the internationally renowned FH JOANNEUM in Graz, Austria, from April 2014 to July 2018.

During his time at Siemens and designaffairs, Michael won a number of prestigious international design awards, including the much sought-after Good Design Award, the iF Product Design Award, the Red Dot Design Award, and many others. Some of his works are part of the Neue Sammlung (New Collectino) of the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.

Since 2019 Lanz is a member of the advisory board for Creative Industries of the Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs, Austria, and since 2021, he is one of the chairpersons of the iF Design Jury.

In April 2022 designaffairs was fully integrated into Accenture Song and the brand was sunset. In October 2022, Michael decided to leave Accenture to start a new business.