Speaker Biographies 2010
Abigail Twitchen is a Registered Trade Mark Attorney and European Trade Mark Attorney, and joined Stratagem in 2005 as Head of Trade Marks. Prior to this she began her career in private practice, moving to ICI in 1999 to take on responsibility for various trade mark portfolios within the ICI Group.
During her time at ICI, Abigail provided advice on trade marks, branding strategy, copyright and design protection and was involved in several acquisitions and disposals. Presently, Abigail specialises in providing sound commercial advice on branding, design protection, copyright, domain names, and other intellectual property issues concerned with the internet. Stratagem prides itself on being focussed on providing value adding advice to businesses in order to make intellectual property rights work as assets for company growth.
Alison Coward is the Founder of Bracket, an agency that brings together independent creative businesses to work together on collaborative projects for commercial clients. She has a background in providing support to creative businesses through project management, providing business advice and teaching in Higher Education.
Alison has worked in management positions for organisations such as Hidden Art, Contemporary Applied Arts and the Enterprise Centre for the Creative Arts (ECCA).
Her work includes developing and managing membership programmes, event management, strategic programme management, business planning and development. Alison is a board member of Creative Capital, and a 2010 member of the Courvoisier Future 500 network.
www.bracketprojects.co.uk
Flora Bowden is a designer and researcher within SEED Foundation, a young organisation that focuses on sustainable design and social enterprise. She recently completed a Master’s degree in Urban Design and is particularly interested in social and political as well as environmental, influences on public space. Through current projects with SEED Foundation she is working across scales, considering systems and service design, as well as product and landscaping solutions to environmental challenges.
She has previously worked for the Parliamentary Design Group as Environmental Design Coordinator and co-authored a positioning paper for the Design Council on the future role of design in the sustainable development agenda.
James Harding is an International Trade Adviser within UK Trade & Investment’s London region. He has over 30 years experience of helping companies develop their business overseas, including micro businesses, SMEs and larger enterprises.
A sales and marketing specialist he has worked for a number of successful international companies including Rank Hovis, Deloitte, WPP Group and Technicolor as well as being Managing Director of Abbey Home Media, which he grew from start-up to a turnover of £2.5 million.
His sector knowledge covers the Creative Industries (filmed media, design and publishing), Tourism and Leisure, Business Services and Food and he has worked across most major international markets including Europe, Far East and China and the Americas. He is an Associate Member of the Institute of Export.
John Sprange won the Hidden Art Product Development Award at this year’s Hidden Art Award ceremony. His JSCD company developed his Mind Dice product to advanced prototype stage using skills and support from the Hidden Polymers programme.
Laurent Nurisso, co-founder of Lifestylebazaar sells innovative design products from both it's London flagship store and online at www.lifestylebazaar.com. Laurent's background as an interior designer as well as working in the commercial sector in museums and exhibitions gives him an interesting edge when selecting design products to feature.
Laurent is one of the principle buyers for both aspects of the business and deals with initial approaches from creatives on a day to day basis. His talk will focus on how designers can best approach retailers; research existing or similar products within the market place. Issues such as comparing price, quality, margin, and seasonality of products; the buying cycle and the all important relationship with the retailer and the need for a good commercial understanding.
Linden Davies graduated with a degree in product design and ‘cut his teeth’ in at Conran and Partners, where he worked on over 80 products. Following this he lead the furniture and product design at Target Living, a London based Architecture and Interior Design practice.
Here he designed and produced collections of furniture for clients worldwide. This consultancy experience developed his creative and cultural curiosity, working between the disciplines of product, graphics, interiors and architecture.
In the past Linden has exhibited his own work at a number of London design shows, and manufactured and sold his own products. He regularly takes part in design workshops with various universities and foundations such as well as The British Council, and is now working as a design consultant.
Margo Selby is a woven textile designer. She trained at Chelsea College of Art and Design and then followed this with a postgraduate degree at The Royal College of Art (RCA), graduating in 2001.
Responding to the overwhelming demand for her fabrics following the RCA degree show Margo began to develop relationships with mills to explore the possibilities of production. The next 18 months were spent at The Ann Sutton Foundation, a pioneering research centre for woven textiles where Margo was one of the founding fellows working on projects for industry alongside developing her own work.
It was during this time that Margo united her innovative hand-woven structures with industrial machinery to create the unique 3-dimensional fabrics that were to become the trademark of the Margo Selby Brand.
Margo Selby launched her first collection in 2003 with the help of a development award from The Crafts Council.
Matt Johnson With qualifications in Materials Science and Engineering, Industrial Design, and now pioneering microstruc-tural research at the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies. Sarat complements a progressive record of work in both the professional and academic fields.Matt Johnson is a recent graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, UK. Matt graduated with an MA from the Industrial Design Engineering program, which means that he is a bit of a designer a bit of an engineer and very comfortable being split between the two.
Since graduation, Matt has co-founded Bare Conductive with his colleagues and has been actively working on product development and promotion, showing the product at numerous events and speaking engagements. Matt continues to work on the business, applications and chemistry behind Bare. Before coming to the UK Matt completed a solo circumnavigation of the globe on his motorcycle and studied Economics and Business at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado USA.
Matthew Judkins is the co-founder and Managing Director of Made in Mind a product development company commercialising the Brit Insurance Design of the Year winning Folding Plug.
In 2009 Matthew won the HSBC Start-up Stars Graduate Award and the Imperial College Graduate Entrepreneurship Award having co-founded Artica Technologies a 2008 Royal College of Art spin-out.
Matthew holds an Executive MBA from Imperial College London and has spent 10 years working in executive positions in small and medium enterprises with specific expertise in entrepreneurial marketing, start-up strategy and finance.
www.madeinmind.co.uk
Natalie Melton, Commercial Director of Arts & Business will be talking about the ‘Crafted’ project, which consists of collaborations between designer-makers and the luxury market.
Natalie works across the Arts & Business network of business members, providing direct support and advice to business, brokering introductions and partnerships and initiating research into new areas of cultural and commercial collaborations.
Natalie speaks about the relationship between culture and commerce regularly both in the UK and abroad. Natalie was previously Chief Executive of Weston Spirit Trading and co-founder of Antersite, a web design agency with a range of creative industry clients.
Paul Tanner has been a member of the Habitat Buying and Design team for 8 years, joining the company in 2002 on a student placement as a Draughtsman.
From that start he worked his way up to becoming a Furniture Technician in 2004, then becoming a Furniture Developer/ Buyer in 2006.
He has experience in taking a concept from a sketch phase all the way to the shop floor, and also buying in products from new designers and suppliers met at trade fairs and exhibitions.
Recently with his work with Purewhyte, he has used the knowledge gained at Habitat when contacting other retailers, to aid getting the collection into mass production and onto the high street.
Richard Tomiln formed The Fusion Effect, a marketing communications design consultancy, in 2001.
Teams of specialists come together for specific projects, adding power and expertise to the creative service. As a result The Fusion effect can provide more imaginative, better focused and effective solutions at affordable prices, when compared to bigger consultancies.
They are passionate about design and its ability to transform business. To paraphrase Woody Allen, “Design is probably the best fun you can have with your clothes on.” They love the variety, relish its challenge and delight in their clients’ surprise.
The Fusion Effect’s work and its client list is testimony to the success of this venture.
People Will Always Need Plates is the creation of Hannah Dipper and Robin Farquhar.
Launched in 2004, they aim to use high quality batch production to create witty, thoughtful and stylish products to be used and enjoyed, treasured and shared, as a direct antithesis to the current proliferation of cheap, throwaway design.
Hannah is an ex-RCA ceramist and has extensive industrial ceramics experience as well as work for Conran & Partners, while Robin, having studied industrial design at Brunel has 10 years experience in exhibition and interior design agencies.
They offer a complete product, graphic, exhibition and interior design service alongside their core range and commissioned wares.
Russell Cameron is a co-founder and director of Innermost.
Based in London he oversees the European business of the innovative lighting, homewares and furniture brand, working with architects and interior designers specifying on both commercial and residential projects.
Since graduating with Honours in Industrial Design from Edinburgh's Napier University, Russell has worked in both consultancy and in-house design roles. With designer Steve Jones they formed Innermost in 1999, and in 2004 opened an office in Hong Kong where Steve now manages their fast growing pan-Pacific markets and the wider global brand.
Innermost represents both established and emerging designers, and is considered within the industry as production specialists with excellent manufacturing facilities in China and the UK.
For further information please visit www.innermost.co.uk.
Sara Gatoff and Maureen Cook set up Buying Vision Ltd in 2003 to offer something different in the creative sector.
They wanted to help designers and designer makers learn how to sell their products successfully to Buyers, and understand the pitching, buying and selection process from the Buying and not the Selling point of view. This has since become a well known point of difference and sets them apart from most other consultancies.
Maureen and Sara have extensive knowledge of the retail sector from their professional backgrounds as Senior Buyers within the UK Head Offices of some major retailers, (Harrods Ltd, Top Shop, Debenhams Plc and Tesco Plc). They are skilled in new product development, range planning and range building and creating product strategies with designers out of concepts and ideas. Developing successful routes to market and understanding how to research your customer and target market are central areas of their training and mentoring programmes.
Buying Vision Ltd now has a large range of successfully training and mentoring programmes in the supported public sector. Sara and Maureen work with many creative designers across all sectors, from ceramics to wallpaper and shoes to jewellery. They work in business and product strategy and advice on routes to market and selling skills. Their aim is for all clients to develop a set of business skills that can be added to their creative skills set so that a business can start, grow and flourish from a concept long after the Buying Vision Ltd programme has ended.
Maureen and Sara both hold professional BA (Hons) as well as training and marketing qualifications. More information on BV Ltd can be found on the website, www.buyingvision.com.
Please contact Sara and Maureen to find out more about availability on their funded programmes on: - sara@buyingvision.com or maureen@buyingvision.com
Sarat Babu is a design engineer and doctorate level researcher who has a range of experiences in both the engineering and design worlds. From working on architectural projects for Ross Lovegrove to new age solar vehicles with Cambridge University, to Powertrain Systems with Visteon - Sarat specialises in design and engineering on every scale.