Louise Fili is director of Louise Fili Ltd, a New York-based design studio specializing in logo, package, restaurant, and book design. Formerly senior designer for Herb Lubalin, Louise Fili was art director of Pantheon Books from 1978 to 1989, where she designed close to 2000 book jackets. Fili has taught and lectured on graphic design and typography, and her work is in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, the Cooper Hewitt Museum and the Bibliothèque Nationale. She is a member of the Art Directors Hall of Fame, and received the medal of lifetime achievement from the AIGA. Fili is the author of Elegantissima and Grafica della Strada, published by Princeton Architectural Press, and has co-authored The Cognoscenti's Guide to Florence and Italianissimo. With her husband, the design historian Steven Heller, she is co-author of Italian Art Deco, British Modern, Dutch Moderne, Streamline, French Modern, Deco España, German Modern, Design Connoisseur, Counter Culture, Typology, Stylepedia, Euro Deco, Scripts, Shadow Type, and Stencil Type.A resident of Florence since 1978, Lise Apatoff earned her bachelor of fine arts from the University of California at Santa Barbara and her master of fine arts from the University of Washington. She is an official museum guide for the city of Florence and has worked all over Italy as a translator, interpreter, tour planner and leader, and museum lecturer.

She has been visiting and tasting in kitchens all over Italy for twenty-five years, and for the past decade has been taking lucky guests with her to explore the marvels of the food and culture of Tuscany.