Speakers

Chris Do is an Emmy award-winning designer, CEO and Chief Strategist of Blind and the founder of The Futur—an online education platform that teaches the business of design to creatives.

He currently serves as the chairman of the board for the SPJA, and as an advisor to Saleshood. He has also served as: advisory board member for AIGA/LA, Emmys Motion & Title Design Peer Group, Otis Board of Governors, Santa Monica College and Woodbury University.

He has taught Sequential design for over a decade at the Art Center College of Design. Additionally, he has lectured all over the world including Digital Design Days Milan, Lu Xun Academy Fine Art Dalian, Motion Conference Santa Fe, MIT Boston, Bend Design Conference Bend, VMA Design Conference San Francisco, Graphika Manila, Create Philippines, Rise Up Summit Cairo, RGD Design Thinkers Toronto, California Institute of the Arts, LA Art Institute, Otis College of Design, UCLA, MGLA, Cal State Los Angeles/ Northridge, Post Production World, Adobe Video World and San Diego University.

Mr. Do has given talks and conducted workshops on: Negotiations, Pricing & Budgeting, Leadership Mindset, Branding, Graphic & Motion Design, Social Media Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Business Management, and Client Relations.

Years: 2019

Jennifer Daniel is a designer for a small ad company called google. Her work explores the divergence of communication and messaging through verbal, written, auditory and visual expression. She hates writings bios and her work has been recognized by many fancy awards, yadda yadda yadda.

Years: 2019

Eduardo Lima graduated in Visual Communications from Ponti cal Universidad e Catolica in Rio de Janeiro. Miraphora Mina graduated in Theatre Design from London’s Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design.

They joined forces in 2002 to take up the artistic challenge that was proposed to them: to imagine and create the graphic universe of the Harry Potter film series. Since then they have shared a common artistic passion and have developed the entire graphic style of all the Harry Potter movies. This fruitful and successful collaboration led them to form their own design studio, MinaLima, specialising in graphic design and illustration.

Since finishing their work on the Harry Potter films and founding their studio in 2009, Miraphora and Eduardo have continued their involvement in the Harry Potter franchise through numerous design commissions. They spent two years designing all the graphic elements for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Diagon Alley at Universal Orlando Resort, as well as designing award winning publications for the brand.

In 2015, MinaLima entered a new chapter of the Wizarding World, designing the graphic props for the Fantastic Beasts film series.

The studio has also created graphic props for films such as Sweeney Todd (2007), The Golden Compass (2007) and The Imitation Game (2014) and designed the bestselling books Peter Pan, The Jungle Book, Beauty and The Beast, The Little Mermaid and The Secret Garden.

Their latest venture is the launch of a dedicated MinaLima gallery and store in London and Osaka, showcasing their entire treasury of graphic works. House of MinaLima seeks to create experiential spaces in the two cities, celebrating the idiosyncracies of their work for the Wizarding World franchise as well as their own creations.

Years: 2019

Jay is a Metalhead working on Adobe XD. Prior to joining Adobe, he designed and developed complex web apps and human friendly enterprise workflows with his own software company. In his spare time Jay is building his own furniture. He runs http://IxDAberlin.de, co-chairs World Interaction Design Day (IxDD) and fuels http://OpenDeviceLab.com, a nonprofit helping to establish and promote Open Device Labs to ultimately help the web and user experience forward.

Years: 2019

Verònica Fuerte is a designer and illustrator from Barcelona.

After earning a degree in Graphic Design from ELISAVA and a MA in Typeface Design from EINA she worked for several design studios in Barcelona.

In 2007 she founded her own studio, Hey, which has grown steadily since. She received the ADC Young Guns 7 award and her work has appeared in prestigious media such as It’s nice that, DesignBoom, Communication Arts and AIGA. Verònica also teaches in several different universities in Barcelona and frequently speaks at international conferences.

Years: 2019

Liam Wong is an award-winning Director, Graphic Designer, Game Developer and Photographer. He is best known for defining and directing visual identities and listed as one of Forbes Magazine’s influential 30 under 30.

Born and raised in Scotland – within two years of graduating, Wong moved to Canada – becoming the youngest director at Ubisoft, the video game company behind Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed. In parallel with his blossoming career in video games, Wong was teaching himself photography.

In December 2015 he purchased his first DSLR (a Canon 5D III) and his debut photo series: ‘Tokyo Nights (TO:KY:OO)’ – capturing the beauty of night through moments after midnight – inspired by sci-fi, neon-noir, cyberpunk and Japanese animation – gained over a million views worldwide, accumulating a large following online and kickstarting his journey into photography. Wong has since collaborated with many high profile companies, artists, musicians and directors. His work has been recognized by media outlets such as BBC, Forbes, Business Insider, Saatchi and Adobe. Full press list available here.

Years: 2019

Michael Johnson has pretty much seen it all. He’s had nine jobs and was fired from three of them, before deciding he’d become unemployable. He started Johnson Banks in London 26 years ago.

He now has clients across the globe. He has rebranded Mozilla entirely in the open, launched a world-beating campaign raising billions for the University of Cambridge, and transformed the thought leaders of impact investment, Acumen – whilst knocking out dozens of stamps and hundreds of posters at the same time.

Johnson wrote a book on problem solving then lifted the lid on the branding process with his international bestseller, Branding: In Five and a Half Steps (Thames and Hudson). His third book, Now Try Something Weirder – How to keep having great ideas and survive in the creative business (Laurence King) comes out in May 2019. It shares 233 thoughts, hints and tips on design, communication and branding in one small, affordable handbook.

Over his career Johnson has won most of the design world’s most desirable bits of wood and metal, including seven ‘yellow’ and one ‘black’ pencil from D&AD. In 2017 he was awarded the Gold D&AD’s Presidents Award, joining a list of previous recipients that includes Sir Terence Conran, Ridley Scott, Alan Parker and Wally Olins. Within education he has been D&AD President, and an external examiner at Glasgow School of Art, Kingston University and LCC. He has helped revalidate the RCA’s communications course and is now an Honorary Professor at Glasgow School of Art.

In his spare moments he wields old-fashioned yet wonderful cameras, and wonders why, after 48 years of trying, he isn’t a better guitar player.

Years: 2019

I was born in Pasadena, CA, which anyone will tell you is a very safe place to live, but in between the time I was born and where I am now, I’ve had two concussions, cracked my front tooth, split open my lip, been stung by a stingray, and broken my arm (all the way up to my shoulder). When the cast came off I had a scar on my elbow in the shape of a nipple. I have a scar on my chin where I cut it wide open falling out of bed. I have scars on my knees from playing little league as a little girl and then softball as a Panda at an all-girls high school in L.A. During one practice I blacked out and fell on my face in center field and got a scab on my upper lip in the exact shape of Hitler’s mustache. Luckily, it didn’t leave a mark.

I went to Santa Fe University of Art and Design (formerly the College of Santa Fe), where I played cricket recreationally and didn’t get hurt once. I got a B.A. in creative writing and studio art and then an M.F.A. in fiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

I live in Brooklyn and work as a writer and editor, a job you’d think is pretty safe, but in the past few years I’ve been thrown from my bike twice, torn my rotator cuff, and undergone minor toe surgery. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Years: 2019

Alice is the first female head of 4creative, Channel 4’s in-house agency. Her mission at 4creative is to create big, beautiful, culturally potent work for Channel 4. Most recent examples of this is the Rio Paralympics campaign ‘We’re The Superhumans’, which was a big all singing celebration of super-ability, involving 140 incredible disabled stars. The campaign won 2 x D&AD black pencils and has been adopted by the U.N. as a worldwide disability aid as well as becoming part of the national curriculum in UK schools.

Years: 2019

Erica Dorn is a graphic designer and illustrator. Having started her career in traditional advertising and branding contexts, she now works in cinema, working closely with directors and production designers to create bespoke visual worlds for television and cinema.

Years: 2019

With a background in typography and graphic design, Richard works as Sony Design’s European Art Director, responsible for the brand’s appearance from typeface to TV advertising, and including brand, retail, product and online communications.

Sony has always been at the forefront of design and was founded on principles that brought together both artists and engineers and encouraged them to ‘think differently’ and ‘always stay one step ahead’.

Since its inception in 1961, Sony Design has forged its reputation as a leading and award-winning global Design Team.

Years: 2019

By Day, Gavin is a Director and Designer for the UK’s beloved creative studio Aardman Animations. By night he goes under the alias of JamFactory, indulging in all manner of passion projects, from filmmaking to illustration, toy design to photography.

In 2016, after speaking at the prestigious Do Lectures, he wrote the book ‘Do Fly’, a motivational mantra published by The Do Book Co & Chronicle Books. He co-founded the contemporary design store ‘STRANGE’ with his wife Jane and even appears in CBBC’s art-themed TV show ‘Art Ninja’.

Making the work is the easy part, finding the time, however, is the difficult bit. In his talks and his book, Gavin shares his stories and methods behind getting the most out of those 24 pesky hours, conveyed via the medium of bright colours and animated GIFs.

He prides himself on being a ‘realistic idealist’ or ‘idealistic realist’ – striking the balance between uncurbed enthusiasm and pragmatic process. Floaty sentiments aside, his talks are about finding the energy and making the time to create things that matter. That’s something Gav believes applies to everyone – from a GSCE to CEO!

Gavin is a keynote speaker and has been fortunate enough to speak around the world, from Mexico to Manchester, the Middle East to Munich.

He lives in Bristol, UK with Jane, their son Sullivan and their greyhound Peggy.

Years: 2019

Milan Moffatt is a designer, educator and mentor based in New York City (or anywhere in the world with a solid WiFi connection). She leads all things design at SuperHi, an online school and community helping creative people from 80+ countries learn new skills and grow in their careers. Before SuperHi, she was designing at agencies and early stage startups in Brooklyn and Santiago, Chile. She spends a lot of time thinking about typography, creating inclusive spaces on the internet and how to keep the unreasonable amount of plants she has in her apartment alive.

Years: 2019

Wes O’Haire is a product designer for Dropbox, where he’s helping design a more enlightened way of working. Before joining Dropbox, his work spanned designing products for Nike, Hudl, and several startups. He also founded Blacks Who Design, a directory that highlights Black designers. He cares about the future of technology, mentorship, and diversity in tech.

Years: 2019

Laura Pol is a creative who specializes in branding and design strategy.

A bulk of her professional career has been dedicated to creating global campaigns for Apple.

Her latest creative endeavour involved the opening of OLIO Studio.

Years: 2019

Laura Jordan Bambach is one of the most prominent voices in the creative industry championing bold creative experimentation and diversity. She is the co-founder of SheSays, a global volunteer network and 40,000-strong community that works to get more women into the creative industries; co-creator of the VOWSS, a showcase celebrating the world’s best work created by women; and co-founder of The Great British Diversity Project, proving the power of diversity for creative effectiveness. She is the partner and Chief Creative Officer at Mr. President, a London-based independent creative agency with Brand Defining Ideas.

Years: 2019

Dan Rhatigan works with Adobe Type in New York as the Senior Manager for Adobe Type Development. He has almost 30 years of eclectic experience in various parts of the design world as a typesetter, graphic designer, typeface designer, and zine publisher. He has a BFA in graphic design from Boston University, and MA in typeface design from the University of Reading, and has released typefaces with Google and Monotype.

Years: 2019

Jon Marshall is an industrial designer whose work fuses product design with strategy, branding, packaging and digital experiences. 

In 2012 he co-founded and directed industrial design consultancy Map.
In 2018 he joined Pentagram’s London office as a partner.

He has created products and user experiences for some of the most innovative companies in the world including global brands like Google, Virgin Atlantic, Honda and IBM as well as public institutions, design and advertising agencies and ambitious startups such as Kano, Graphcore, Beeline and Pigzbe

He has won many industry awards for industrial design including D&AD, Design Week, Red Dot, German Design Award, Cannes Lions, Core77, The Clios and The One Show. He was listed as one Creative Review’s top 50 creative leaders and has served on the jury of numerous design awards.

Years: 2019

Chappell Ellison is a content strategist at the Brooklyn-based digital agency Huge, a UX writing teacher at the School of Visual Arts, and the co-editor of Design for People. She’s also a former graphic designer and recovering civil servant.

Years: 2019

Framestore Chief Creative Officer and Co-founder Mike McGee has been in the VFX industry for over 25 years, working across TV on BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs and Universal’s Feature Film Nanny McPhee, to directing TV campaigns for brands such as O2, ,BBC, Robinsons, Speedo, Next and Andrex.

Framestore is an Oscar-winning creative studio, dedicated to creating extraordinary experiences and combining world-leading craft and relentless creativity with tomorrow’s technology. A global leader in innovation across the digital sphere, Framestore continues to push the boundaries of what is possible within Film, advertising, experiential and Virtual Reality technologies.

Years: 2018, 2019

Kath is a Creative Director with over 15 years’ experience creating brands for some of the world’s most prominent organisations. With a passion for design that delivers a positive social impact, she has worked on numerous projects in the arts, culture, education and non-profit sectors, at johnson banks, The Partners, and now Superunion.

Her recent work for Shakespeare’s Globe took home two Silver Cannes Lions at last year’s festival. She has also been widely recognised and awarded by organisations such as Art Directors Club, Brand New, Brand Impact, Clio, Creative Review, D&AD, Design Week, Drum, Fast Company and New York Festivals.

In 2018 she worked in collaboration with BBC Creative and a host of animation talent to create BBC Two’s first rebrand for over 20 years.

Kath’s passionate advocacy for diversity in creativity has been recognised by D&AD’s members, who elected her to the Board of Trustees in 2016. She is a regular design judge for schemes including D&AD professional and New Blood awards.

A graduate of Central Saint Martins, Kath has a keen interest in design education, leading Superunion’s partnership with D&AD New Blood Academy that promotes emerging creative talent. She is a regular visiting lecturer and speaker, and has recently completed four years as external examiner for the Graphic Design and Illustration degree course at the Cass School, London Metropolitan University.

Years: 2019

Ting is a London-based UX designer passionate about making emerging technologies accessible to the public. She formerly worked as an interaction designer of a home robot, looking at the applications and social implications of machine learning technology. Right now she works at Kano Computing focusing on STEM/STEAM products for children.

Years: 2019

Bruno Schillinger is a product designer with a focus on combining form and detail with creative and informed design processes to create thoughtful and innovative products. After working for several London design studios Bruno has spent the last 4 years working as lead product designer at Kano computing, delivering new ways for people of any age to make, play and learn with technology, from inception right through to production.

Years: 2019

Toshi Omagari is a type designer at Monotype. He studied typography and typeface design at Musashino Art University in Tokyo, where he graduated in 2008, and went on to obtain an MA in typeface design at University of Reading in 2011. Since he joined Monotype in UK, he has released a number of revivals of forgotten classics such as Metro Nova and the Berthold Wolpe Collection. He has also been involved in many aspects of multilingual typography and font development, including work on various scripts including Greek, Cyrillic, Mongolian, Tibetan, and Arabic.

Years: 2019

Extinction Rebellion is an international movement that uses non-violent civil disobedience to achieve radical change in order to minimise the risk of human extinction and ecological collapse.

Years: 2019

Tina Touli is a creative director, graphic communication designer, maker, speaker and educator. She currently runs her own London based award-winning multidisciplinary studio, and teaches at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. She works in a great variety of design fields, including print and digital design, with different clients, such as Adobe, Dell, Tate, Converse, University of the Arts London, Kappa, Athens Digital Arts Festival and Movement Festival. She had the honor to be selected by Print Magazine as one of the 15 best young designers in the world, aged under 30 (2017). Her work has been featured in Adobe Create Magazine, Digital Arts Magazine and Creative Review blog among others and design publications such as “Design{h}ers” by Viction:ary.

Years: 2019

Patrick Thomas (1965 Liverpool, UK) is a graphic artist, author and educator. He studied at Central Saint Martins School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London before relocating to Barcelona in 1991 where he founded the multidisciplinary studio laVista. In 2005 he published Black & White, a compilation of his work for the international Press. In 2011 Laurence King Publishing, London, published his second book Protest Stencil Toolkit. A revised edition will be published in April 2019.

In 2007 he established his first silkscreen press in Barcelona and decided to concentrate on releasing personal, uncommissioned work. Since then he has exhibited his limited-editions across five continents, where many are now held in private and public collections. He set up a second silkscreen press in Berlin in 2016.

In April 2018 he was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 Front Row about his public installation Breaking News 1.0 in Liverpool. The installation has since be shown at the London Design Festival at the V&A, in Manchester, and aroiunfd Europe.

He has given talks about his practice and held workshops worldwide, extensively in the UK, Spain and Germany. Between 2004–05 he was Graphic Research Fellow at Liverpool School of Art (Liverpool John Moores University) and since October 2013 he is a professor of visual communication at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design.

Since 2011 he is based in Berlin. He works between there, London, Barcelona and Stuttgart. He is a UK member of AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale). In Spring 2019 he was invited for a two month residency at Villa Massimo, the German Academy in Rome.

Years: 2019

James is Creative Director of BBC Creative – the BBC’s in-house advertising agency – and primarily heads-up work to promote BBC Sport, CBBC, CBeebies, BBC Learning and Charities including Children In Need. Previously James has won over 150 creative and effectiveness with agencies such as McCann, Big and JWT.

Years: 2019

Merle Hall is CEO of Kinneir Dufort (KD), a world leading, user-centred Innovation and Product Development consultancy, whose purpose is to Design a Better World.  She has over 20 years’ experience in consultancy, an expert in Design Thinking, Strategy and Innovation, launching life-changing products and services for Healthcare and FMCG businesses globally. In 2016, Merle led a private-equity backed management buyout of KD.

Merle sits on the board of the Design Business Association (DBA) and Kerning the Gap (KtG), championing women in design leadership and is leading a national KtG roll out programme, as well as partnering with STEM organisations Teen Tech and the Big Bang, focusing on the next generation of innovators, designers and engineers.

Years: 2019

Paul Woods is a Los Angeles designer, writer and illustrator. He leads Edenspiekermann‘s American creative and technology teams as CCO, building products, brands, and service design work for clients in industries as diverse as editorial, sustainability, and transportation.

Over the course of his career, Paul has been at the helm of industry-leading projects for companies like Google, Red Bull and Morgan Stanley. An advocate for creating useful things that people actually need as opposed to filling the world with more garbage they don’t, Paul places a hyper-focus on the user in his work. He has been recognized by Awwwards, the ISTD, and other leading design institutions.

In his spare time, Paul is an illustrator and co-founder of the satirical industry website Adloids. His debut book, “How To Do Great Work Without Being An Asshole” this year, published by Laurence King.

He lives in Pasadena with his wife and a very stubborn basset hound.

Years: 2019

Throughout her career, Vanessa has been driven by three things: cultures, connections, and communities. She continually looks both outward and inward to foster inspiration, forge creative communities and encourage risk-taking, curiosity and bold action. As a result her career isn’t a straight line. With her roots in graphic design she has led global re-designs of iconic brands, created her own role in HR which provided educational & inspirational opportunities for 600+ creatives, and now in marketing is curating creative experiences for iconic and cross vertical inhouse design teams from the US to Europe. Oh, and one might say, she has a slight coffee obsession.

Years: 2019

After finishing School of Applied Arts, Oliver Brunschwiler traveled the world as a professional snowboarder and founded his own snowboard clothing label. At the same time he graduated from commercial and management school. After completing his snowboarding career, he was art- and creative director at renowned international design and advertising agencies. In 1999 he co-founded the branding and communication agency /DEPARTMENT, which he sold to the international agency network Foote, Cone & Belding in 2013 (www.fcb.com).

In 2014 he became a member of the FREITAG Executive Board as Head of Brand and responsible for creation and communication. Since 2016, he has energized various holocratic roles such as Commercial Director, Creative Direction and Strategic Planner. In October 2018 he was promoted Lead Link of the Company which, in the world of domination and hierarchical organization charts, translates into Delegate of the Board of Directors.

Years: 2019

Anna Burles runs an award-winning boutique interior design studio in West London called Run For The Hills, specialising in the design of highly original and conceptual commercial and residential spaces. Her interiors is full of individuality, innovative surprises and hidden creative touches, styling modern and traditional spaces in conceptual ways, devising exciting schemes full of creative touches and artfully juxtaposing eclectic finds, vintage classics and antique classic with modern next-generation design and high street gems.

Her client list includes well-known and stylish private individuals, music stars and well-known hospitality, F&B and retail brands. She even designed for the Queen during the Coronation Festival. Whilst her clients may be extremely varied and her work equally eclectic, the thread running through them is stylish individuality with a contemporary cool edge. She runs the business with her artist and graphic designer husband, Chris (a.k.a. “Dex”) and they also specialise in hospitality design, including concepting a new boutique cinema, bar & cafe in Bath, and Kricket’s new restaurant at the iconic Television Centre. On the residential side, they are currently refurbishing a huge light-filled apartment within an iconic shorefront Grand Hotel in Nice, in the South of France, and the styling the London home of popstar Ellie Goulding, with whom Anna has worked for many years.

Years: 2019

Raised on a diet of cartoons, video games and movies, it only made sense that I would become an Animator one day.

It didn’t hit me until I was in my teens that Animation was an arena that I could have a career in.

In 2000 I became a professional Animator, working in Video games, TV/ Commercials and VFX Films.

I am obsessed with animation so whenever I am involved in a project animation has to play a big part of it.
Whether it be animating on Clone Wars the TV series to animating Rocket the Raccoon, Venom, or working on personal projects, my joy is Animation.:)

Years: 2019

An experienced service designer with a background in ux and product design, Kirsty designs services for the public sector with the people who use them. Working on end-to-end process and diving into detail, Kirsty uses her skills in visualising ideas, analysis of research and prototyping to bring new and useful ways of working to her teams.

At FutureGov Kirsty works on housing, children’s social care, adult social care and healthcare projects, as well as experimenting with team working methods, storytelling and sketchnoting.

Years: 2019

Ben O’Brien started working under the moniker ‘Ben the Illustrator’ in 2005, having previously worked predominantly in animation from Japanese music videos to CBeebies TV shows.  Ben has since applied his colourful graphic illustrations to ad campaigns for Smart Cars and Berri Fruit Juice, editorial work for The New York Times and The Boston Globe and an endless variety of other projects from designing street signs for Earth Day in NYC, illustrating coffee packaging for Girls Who Grind Coffee and creating clothing and street art graphics for XBox and Playstation games.

Years: 2019

Steph Hartman is the founder of Collage Club, a workshop series celebrating the art of cutting and sticking. Initially designed as a way of downsizing her magazine collection, she soon realised it was the perfect way for people to relax and get creative without worrying about making perfectly proportioned, boring drawings. Utilising her background in illustration, Steph’s Collage Club workshops combine fast paced tasks, collaborative image making and observational collaging, always yielding fun and unexpected results. Collage Club sessions are held regularly across London and the UK.

When she’s not collaging, Steph is the events producer at magCulture where she oversees the company’s annual ModMag conferences in London and New York, as well as monthly talk series and special projects.

Years: 2019

WorkGroup is an identity design studio founded by David Wall and Conor Nolan in 2006. The studio creates useful, beautiful graphic design for a wide variety of clients, from pioneering startups to national institutions. The work lives in print, on-screen and in environmental applications. Every project is an opportunity to create a distinctive and compelling response to the client’s goals.

The studio’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Wallpaper*, Monocle, Travel + Leisure (New York), Computer Arts and The Irish Times. It has also been recognised by leading awards bodies, initiatives and collections; national and international. The studio’s projects have been category winners in the IDI Irish Design Awards, won ICAD bells and had our work included in the 100 Archive (Ireland’s national graphic design archive). A selection of work has been added to the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the National Library of Ireland.

Years: 2019

Patrick is creative director of dn&co. Born in London and the son of two architects, working with the built environment was probably always inevitable. Patrick started his career in design at the ever-pioneering National Theatre, before spending seven years at cultural design heavyweight, Spin.

With nearly 20 years in the industry, he has wide-ranging experience across all disciplines of design – from static print and moving image to wayfinding and immersive environmental. A stickler for the hidden detail as much as the bigger picture, he has created brands and identities for places across the world — from neighbourhood restaurants, to museums and entire parts of cities. Last year he co-founded Place Press with Joy as the perfect platform to explore how people think about space and place — from how they navigate, to what stories they tell and the experiences they take away.

Years: 2019

Karishma is a designer, collaborator, entrepreneur, lover of all things creative, avid podcast-listener and postcard enthusiast.  Karishma is passionate about putting Belfast on the international map for Design and making it a must-visit destination for design lovers. Karishma founded her multidisciplinary design studio Karishma’s World in 2014 and has collaborated on several ventures including The Design Salon, Small Town Big Dreams & Belfast Design Week since then.

Years: 2019

Toby Hextall is the Director of Product Design at MOO leading the team tasked with concepting, creating and delivering all of MOO’s products and packaging.

Toby conceived MOO’s Cotton Business Cards made of T-shirt offcuts and worked with partner Mohawk Fine Papers to bring the product to market. Meanwhile from MOO’s notebooks to packaging designed to delight, Toby and his team scour the world to bring great design and new products to MOO’s range.

Prior to joining MOO, Toby worked at Hasbro Games and ran his own furniture and product design business.

Years: 2019

Felix Ackermann is the lead designer in the Product Design team at MOO, bringing a huge wealth of print and paper knowledge to the team from his prior life in graphic design. The MOO notebook product line was conceived by Felix, who felt that there was the opportunity to imagine it better through useful design and beautiful detailing. His obsession with paper and passion for craftsmanship is helping to make great design accessible for MOO’s customers.

Years: 2019

Bianca is a designer and engineer based at the intersection of typography, type design and technology. She is creative director at font foundry Dalton Maag and active member of Alphabettes, Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI) and the Unicode Consortium.

Years: 2019

Since obtaining a Master’s Degree in Digital Games Theory & Design, Abigail Flores has worked on AAA titles at SEGA and indie mobile games at ustwo Games. She has recently been featured as MCV magazine’s Rising Star and her work is due to be showcased in Wireframe magazine. She has designed, produced and released her own games independently and is currently working with a small international team in her free time to develop her largest project yet, set to release at the end of 2019.

Years: 2019

Kota provides design leadership across projects and practice at ustwo’s London Studio. Before moving to London, he lived and worked in New York City where he gained a multitude of design experience. His work lies in the intersection of brand, product, and technology. He aims to bring useful and delightful experiences to all products that he touches.

Years: 2019

Sam is a Bristol-based independent Illustrator and Paper Artist.

She directs, designs, cuts and hand crafts all of her creations from a range of fine quality papers and regularly collaborates with talented designers, photographers, videographers and production companies to produce eye-catching, unforgettable work.

Her paper sculptures are used both commercially and artistically, for a variety of different purposes ranging from ad and awareness campaigns, set design, editorial and publishing predominantly in the events, travel, beauty and food + drink sectors.

Sam has a passion for the environment and sustainability. She enjoys working with clients who make a positive difference for our fragile planet. She has produced work for a range of clients, including: Lush, Chilly’s Bottles, Origins, City and Eurometropole Strasbourg, Goldsmiths University of London, Wimbledon Tennis, Mullen Lowe Group and Visit Bristol.

Years: 2019

Joy has a natural curiosity for places and place identity. Born in Rio and educated in San Francisco, she has called London her home for 20 years and compulsively travels at every opportunity. Joy is the founder of dn&co, a brand consultancy inspired by culture and place, and the team behind the reinvention of some of London’s most remarkable areas — St James’s, Broadgate, Television Centre, White City Place, and Ilford Town.  Joy has collaborated with government, architects, developers and businesses to create meaningful destinations in workplaces, residential, retail, restaurants — through to entire neighbourhoods and towns.

Last year Joy founded Place Press, an independent publisher that explores the intersection between people, places and culture. Her recent book, Know Your Place, talks about the need to go beyond placemaking and create places with purpose.

Years: 2019

Brendan Dawes is an artist exploring the interaction of objects, people, technology and art using form and code with an eclectic mix of digital and analogue materials. Author of two books on interaction design, his work is featured in the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, has been 3D printed on the International Space Station and has been honoured in awards including Fast Company Innovation by Design, Information is Beautiful and D&AD. Clients include Airbnb, Google, Twitter, The Royal Shakespeare Company, Intel, Cancer Research UK, Mailchimp, M&C Saatcci, EE, PWC, The Atlantic, and Arup.

Years: 2019

Bryan Edmondson is a British graphic designer and founder of independent design consultancy, SEA. Over the past two decades SEA has attracted some of the worlds most influential brands across all sectors. Bryans expertise ranges from large-scale brand identity programs to campaign art direction, brand development and print with a reputation of simple and an uncluttered approach to solving design problems for clients such as Monotype, GF Smith, Christies, Jamie Oliver, EMI, Adidas, Matthew Williamson, W Hotel, Regatta, London Art Fair and City & Guilds.

Bryans work has been widely published globally and received recognition in both national and major international awards such as D&AD along with the highly prestigious nomination from the Design Museum, Designs of the Year. During his career he has lectured at many UK universities and events such as D&AD, Semi Permanent (New Zealand), Typo Circle, 4 Designers and the Northern Design Festival along with the curation and design of the D&AD supported Design for Rail Exhibition in 2018.

Years: 2019

Ruth Claxton is an Artist. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally by galleries and projects including Ikon Gallery, Site Santa Fe, Spike Island, Whitechapel Gallery, Situations and the Guangzhou Triennial. She has work in the Arts Council Collection, and in 2012 she won the Arts Foundation’s Yoma Sasburg Sculpture Fellowship. She is a founding Director of Eastside Projects where she works alongside Gavin Wade to lead the organisation and has co-curated projects including Sculpture Show (2009), Achaintre, Barker, Channer (2012), Samara Scott: Silks (2015), Birmingham Show (2015), Production Show (2016-18) and mix rice: Migrating Flavours (2018).

In 2014 she initiated research that led to the Birmingham Production Space proposal (2015), which outlined an ambitious proposition for a new, large scale, national centre for the production of art and design. Many of these ideas have been realised through STEAMhouse, a new £3.5million centre for cross sector, interdisciplinary collaborative and creative innovation, developed in partnership with Birmingham City University and funded by ERDF and Arts Council England, which opened in Birmingham in 2018. As STEAMhouse Creative Director she leads the Open Route which supports artists and other creative makers to test and make new work and develop their practice and career.

Years: 2019

Eriol is a product & UX designer (via a fine art degree) who has worked in-house roles for 9+ years. Now working at Ushahidi, a humanitarian, non-profit technology leader, developing open-source, digital tools to help people with better democratic process, human rights issues and in the event of natural and human-made disasters.

Eriol is a non-binary, queer person who uses they/them pronouns and an LGBTQIA+ advocate.

They are deeply passionate about intersectional inclusion and mental health in tech.

Years: 2019

Nick Asbury is a writer for branding and design. Recent projects include Sideways Dictionary (a dictionary explaining technology using analogies, created with Google); Dear World, Yours Cambridge (a fundraising campaign for Cambridge University led by Johnson Banks); and branding work for National Autistic Society, Mozilla, Generation Press and others. His personal projects include Perpetual Disappointments Diary (a downbeat appointments diary, published by Pan Macmillan), Corpoetics (corporate copy rearranged into verse), and Realtime Notes (Instagram poems written in rapid response to current events). He is one of 53 writers featured in The Copy Book: How some of the best advertising writers in the world write their advertising (D&AD/Taschen). In 2016, he co-authored the updated edition of A Smile in the Mind: Witty thinking in Graphic Design. He writes frequently for Creative Review.

Years: 2019

Trish Thomas is Head of Digital Engagement at Southbank Centre where she leads a team of 13 to deliver the websites, digital content production and social media channel experience. As part of the Audiences Directorate her team has a responsibility for driving sales as well as audience engagement.

With a background originally in journalism, Trish has a long career in Digital with previous roles at commercial agencies as well as Royal Museums Greenwich, Kew Gardens and Arts Council England.

Years: 2019

Ollie is Chief Talent Officer for McCann Central, the UK’s largest integrated agency group, where his remit includes further developing the brand to attract, develop and retain transformational talent, spearheading employee communications and bringing greater diversity to the agency.

Prior to this he spent over fifteen years as a talent partner to leading agencies and brands, having co-founded and built one of the UK’s most successful specialist recruiters in the creative industries.

A passionate advocate for developing the talent of tomorrow, Ollie pioneered an award winning not for profit scheme that helped students gain crucial experience within the creative industry, which ultimately helped launch numerous successful careers.

He’s fascinated about how modern businesses can build diverse, high performing teams and the how this is being influenced by the shifting talent landscape that we’re operating in today.

Years: 2019

Jacob leads innovation inside the world’s most effective agency network, McCann Worldgroup. He is also a writer and speaker on experience design, product development and business transformation. With over ten years worth of experience in helping global organisations such as Hilton, General Motors and the BBC to innovate, Jacob believes that fundamental changes in customers, competitors and technology are a massive opportunity for (rather than just a threat to) big companies.

Years: 2019

Rich Newbold is an Executive Producer at Frontier Developments in Cambridge. He is lead producer on Jurassic World Evolution and has worked on BAFTA nominated Planet Coaster amongst other Frontier titles and has over 10 years experience of the video games industry.

Years: 2019

Paul Barnes is a type and graphic designer, and a partner in Commercial Type, a leading Anglo-American type foundry. With his partner Christian Schwartz he designed the famed typefaces for the Guardian newspaper in 2005 and recently revisited them for the 2018 redesign. He has designed typefaces for a wide range of clients, from the National Trust to the numbers on Puma and Umbro Football shirts. His retail typefaces include Publico (with Christian Schwartz), Dala Floda and Austin. Commercial Type have recently launched a second venture Commercial Classics, releasing new versions of classic typefaces.

Years: 2019

Cat is celebrating 10 years as head of Artfelt at Sheffield Children’s Hospital. Under her management, the project has grown to be a leader in its field; transforming the hospital and helping children recover in spaces tailored to them. Championing the impact art can have on health, Cat has commissioned leading artists from around the world and won multiple awards for her work. Not bound by pre-conceptions of what healthcare settings should be she advocates for a child-centred approach to design.

Years: 2019

Years: 2019

Rob is a structural engineer with a passion for creating innovative, efficient and elegant structures.

Having worked with some of the best architectural practices throughout his career he has developed award winning structural designs on projects around the world ranging from solid stone staircases and timber pavilions to air traffic control towers and railway stations.

He is an Associate at Arup, an independent firm of designers, consultants and engineers, where he currently leads the structural design on the Paradise Circus redevelopment in central Birmingham and the new High Speed 2 station at Interchange.

He strongly believes that all buildings should be designed with sustainability in mind, making best use of finite resources and believes that the industry must challenge the status quo in order to innovate.

Rob recently co-founded ‘Make:It Brum’ alongside local architectural practice Intervention Architecture – a community engagement collaboration which aims to inspire the next generation of designers and promote diversity in the built environment professions.

Years: 2019

The Office Of Craig Oldham is the eponymous practice of designer and creative consultant Craig Oldham (obviously).

Working across numerous disciplines, the studio creates brands, books, websites, films, exhibitions, and objects. We also teach, write, curate and consult. And we do this for clients, audiences, and sometimes just for the joy of it.

We are a young and intentionally small team of creative problem solvers, makers and doers. And with extensive industry experience, we’ve learnt that the better the relationship we have with a client, the better the work will be.

So far we’ve been recognised by Art Directors Club, D&AD, Design Week Awards, Creative Review, New York Festivals, Type Directors Club, as well as national and international press coverage and exhibitions. Last year, a book we wrote and designed was included in the 50 best in the world of 2013.

Years: 2018, 2019

Sweta is Head of Art at Health Unlimited with more than twenty years experience in the advertising & marketing comms industry. She has worked in London, the regions and Internationally for agencies big and small, producing award-winning work across all disciplines.

Her work has been recognized by: Cannes, D&AD, One Show, Campaign Press & Poster and the Outdoor Hall Of Fame. Conceptual thinking, an eye for detail and a fresh approach to creative ideas and craft are Sweta’s strong points.

Being one of the very few senior female advertising creatives in the Midlands, Sweta is keen to share her learnings and experience with women aspiring to find their place in the industry. Which is why she co-founded “Women Unltd” in March 2018, the first and only networking platform for women in the creative and marketing industries in Birmingham.

Sweta has also been a guest lecturer and a mentor for visual communication students at the Birmingham City University since 2009.

More recently, she was awarded a Google scholarship to attend the D&AD Festival in London including their RARE workshop – a 2-day masterclass for 50 unusual creative minds from all over the world with a shared purpose of promoting diversity in the creative industries.

Years: 2018, 2019

Maria is an architect and founding director of architecture and engineering practice Interrobang. Interrobang was founded with engineers, Steve Webb and Andy Yates of Webb Yates Engineers in order to make extraordinary contributions to the built environment though a genuinely transdisciplinary design process. Projects currently range from the first new pedestrian and cycle bridge to be built in Bath city centre for a century, to the refurbishment of the Grade II* listed Hoover Factory to create 66 new homes.

Prior to this, Maria was a founding director of multi-award-winning art and architecture practice Studio Weave where she led a range of projects for local authorities, community groups, and arts groups. Maria studied at the University of Bath (UK), Technical University Delft (The Netherlands) and London Metropolitan University (UK).

Maria writes a monthly column on architectural practice in the RIBAJ and contributes to magazines including the Architects’ Journal, the Architectural Review, Dezeen and others. She is co-curator of innovative series of politics and architecture debates, Turncoats; a member of the RIBA National Awards Panel; an external examiner at the University of Sheffield and Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth, Wales; Creative Director of the 2016 RIBA Guerrilla Tactics Conference, Super Models; and a trustee of The Architecture Foundation.

Years: 2019

Steve started his career as a site engineer for the Jubilee Line Extension, gaining first-hand experience of site issues and subterranean construction in London. He went on to work at Whitby Bird and Sinclair Knight Merz and Santiago Calatrava, where he worked on prestigious projects including Wembley Arena and the Turning Torso tower in Sweden, a 58 storey residential tower with a dramatic twisting form achieved with a hybrid steel and concrete frame.

Since founding Webb Yates Engineers, Steve has designed a variety of innovative structural solutions which have seen the practice win numerous awards. These include the Fuente del Jarro factory in Spain which incorporates V-shape trusses as part of the steel and concrete composite long span solution. Steve also designed the feature steelwork package for the Unilever Headquarters including an innovative stressed skin profiled metal deck roof.

Steve has a broad knowledge of structural materials and is experienced designing with a range of construction technologies. Steve is interested in combining imagination with technical rigour to create artful and inventive structural designs.

Steve is also a visiting lecturer at Oxford Brookes University School of Architecture and a Structures tutor for Architectural Association Interprofessional Studio.

Years: 2019

Adrian is CPO and co-founder of the education startup Aula. With degrees in product design and management, Adrian first worked in luxury re-brandings and fragrance products before founding and designing his own technical sportswear clothing line. Adrian co-founded Aula in 2014 because he believes it is time to push the ed-tech industry into making student-centred, beautiful products designed for an engaging educational experience.

Years: 2019

Alessandro is a Senior Lecturer at the Birmingham School of Architecture and Design, Birmingham City University. He co-established and leads the Collaborative Laboratory (Co.LAB) a design and research initiative within the school that integrates teaching with practice through live projects, staff research and design consultancy.

He graduated from the Manchester School of Architecture with a distinction in both postgraduate architecture and MA Urbanism prior to developing his portfolio as an independent artist/designer. Prior to becoming an academic, Alessandro worked in architecture and research practices in Manchester and London with experience in evidence-based architectural research consultancy and heritage renovation projects.

Co.LAB jointly won a National Urban Design Award for the Knowledge Hub masterplan and a Biffa award for the design of Birmingham Open Media (BOM Gallery). He has recently joined the Birmingham City Council’s Planning Design and Conservation Review Panel and sits on the board for Centrala gallery.

Years: 2019

Ally Standing is a Lecturer in Contextual Studies at Birmingham City University. She is a Birmingham-based visual artist and writer, with a psychogeographic, interdisciplinary practice, exploring ideas surrounding the built environment. Post-war architecture, postmodern space, and public art are some of her main areas of interest.
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(Ally Standing photo Image credit: Olivier Metzger / Air France Magazine.)

Years: 2019

Mike’s business and creative philosophy is a simple one; everything starts with humans! It’s this refreshingly grounded perspective and approach that spearheads the creative vision of Green Room Design. His intelligent, considered and highly engaging persona provides audiences with an alternative view of the industry landscape – and in turn – the crux of the challenges that brands and retailers currently face.

Years: 2019

Jane is a lecturer in Graphic Communication at Birmingham City University’s School of Visual Communication. She is also a freelance designer with over 17 years industry experience in brand and visual identity, illustration, packaging, design for print and photography. She is interested in blogging pedagogy to facilitate learning and recently wrote her HFEA PGCert on this subject.

Years: 2019

As an architect, artist, lecturer and researcher, Michael Dring is interested in recording physical civic and infrastructural spaces, and in capturing the ephemeral, often fragmentary experiences of extant, threatened or lost spaces of the city. His audio-visual work offers a critique of the modernist iconoclasm – the destruction of the ideas, the image and form of the post-war city for political motives – through the union of experimental processes in photogrammetry, archival interpretation, mapping, film making, and soundtracking, in doing so offering insights into the value of past ideals to give the present greater depth of meaning. Michael’s work with the Birmingham Modernist Society also seeks to redress the balance in the ongoing changes to the city, through events and publications.

Years: 2019

Anna Parker is IA’s founding Director, a qualified Architect who has gained experience in a number of renowned architecture practices within the UK, leading a variety of residential, education and commercial projects from conception to completion.

Anna has been shortlisted for; UK Construction Week Role Model; a national RIBA ‘Rising Star’; the Birmingham Post ‘Business Entrepreneur of the Year’, listed within the ‘Midlands top 50 Entrepreneurs’ (Insider), and was nominated as a finalist for Birmingham’s Young Professional of the Year.

Further to her RIBA chartered membership, Anna also sits on the panel for the RIBA Small Practice Group which regularly meets in London.

Anna has taught at the Birmingham School of Architecture since 2014, and has led a 3rd year design studio on the Undergraduate Course. Several of Anna’s students have been nominated for the prestigious Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) President’s Bronze medal award in the academic years in which she has taught to date.

Anna also sits on the Birmingham City Council ‘Design and Conservation Review Panel’, as a Core Member.

Years: 2018, 2019

Luke works at 383 in Birmingham as an Experience Designer, helping lead the Human Centred Design process and working closely with a wide variety of clients to uncover product opportunities, using design to solve problems for real people. With over 10 years experience in managing and designing digital experiences, Luke is an expert in combining design thinking & product realisation, with a background in engineering to further help 383 and their clients deliver the right experiences.

Years: 2019

Tracey Thorne has lived in Birmingham since the late 1980s.  She has spent over twenty five years working with local communities and has a Masters degree in Public Health. In 2018 she founded Ghost Streets CIC which delivers arts and culture projects working collaboratively with communities. Tracey spends the rest of her time working on independent projects to document hand-painted walls found in streets around the world.

She has been visiting Jamaica since 2009.

This exhibition builds on Tracey’s work to document and share stories that explore the ephemeral landscape found in streets and urban spaces. With a particular interest in hand-painted advertising signs, street art and graffiti, Tracey’s original research has produced the largest photographic survey of hand-painted street signs (ghost signs) in Birmingham.

Through her work Tracey fuses together the act of walking the streets to discover alternative ways to navigate and think about places, exploring themes connected to ‘freedom and space’. Tracey uses street photography within this context to connect with the space and to record the stories which are written on the walls.

Years: 2019

Adam Cox is the founder of Cavendish pianos. His company handcrafts pianos in the beautiful setting of the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

After a degree in modern languages at Leeds University Adam studied piano technology at Leeds College of Music. Before leaving college he set up Headingley Pianos in 1994. Starting with one piano the business gradually grew. In 2012 the company relocated to Bolton Abbey and became Yorkshire Pianos. Housed in a converted forge the premises incorporates the factory for building the award-winning Cavendish Pianos. Now in its sixth year Cavendish pianos are sold throughout the UK and exported to China.

Years: 2019

ICBQ is a magazine led by a group of final year graphic design students at Falmouth University. It celebrates and investigates the unseen and unused work of graphic designers and other creatives in the industry. Our goal as a magazine is to share the stories behind rejected pieces of work and get more people talking about the lesser-discussed parts of the design profession.

Years: 2019

During their last year at Falmouth University, Eleanor and Emma wanted to approach and develop an understanding of the underrepresentation of women within the design industry. As feminists, Eleanor and Emma both have a passion to build on the progress that has already been made regarding equality. ‘Fully Justified’ was formed in January 2019, with the purpose of investigating, understanding and ideally changing future perspectives of women in design. Currently working on a project that voices the stories of the last decade of female Falmouth graduates, they want to compare past and current experiences to determine whether the design industry is striving towards gender equality. Their ultimate goal is to inspire and empower the next generation of female creatives that they can achieve senior roles within the industry.

Years: 2019