I Love Design

Bio's

Ben Terrett
Partner, Really Interesting Group

Check out Ben's Biography and his blog

links http://www.reallyinterestinggroup.com, http://noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com

Iain Tait
Creative Partner, Poke

Iain has been working in the online space since the mid nineties. After graduating from Edinburgh University with a BSc in Psychology he built websites for many of the Edinburgh Festivals. But before he had time get involved with the Puppet Festival he moved to London (the rumour was that they had a better version of the Internet down there).

At an unpronounceable agency called Syzygy he worked on projects for The Royal Opera House, Boots, Wilkinson Sword and Siemens.

He moved to become the Director of Product Development for First Tuesday, a networking organisation connecting entrepreneurs to VCs. After being responsible for the .com boom he realised he missed the creative bit of agency life. So he moved to an agency called Oven Digital. Which went bust.

From the ashes of Oven Iain set up a hybridised entertainment startup which proved to be ahead-of-it's-time (i.e. irrelevant). So in the depths of the .com trough he started Poke with 5 other homeless digital veterans.

Poke is a creative agency that focuses on the digital space. As well as working with clients like Orange, WWF, American Express, Zopa and Yahoo! Iain writes a blog at crackunit.com and gets involved with a bunch of industry things.

Finally, he absolutely hates writing about himself in the third person, it makes him feel very strange.

Check out Iain's blog

links http://www.pokelondon.com, http://www.crackunit.com

Vaughan Oliver
Designer

After studying under mentor Terry Dowling at Newcastle-upon-Tyne Polytechnic Oliver worked in the packaging design studios of Benchmark and Michael Peters and Partners in London. Occasional commissions for the newly formed independent record label 4AD began a personal graphic sojourn which continues with the label today. The label’s identity was designed in 1980 and has been maintained by Oliver and his collaborators for 25 years.

Supported by Chris Bigg since 1988, their work together was credited to v23 and formalised with a partnership in 1998. Specialising in work for the music industry, their collaboration has attracted clients from a broader field, including company identities for Albanian choreographer Angelin Prejlocaj, film production companies in Germany, Spain, USA and the UK, communication software designers Celona, magazine design (huH, Raygun Publishing), book and book cover design for V&A Publishing (Ossie Clark, Hair and Fashion), Picador, Serpent's Tail, Instar Libri, special print projects for L'Oreal, Central Saint Martin’s and Coco de Mer, film direction and graphic design for various TV commercials (Microsoft, Sony Playstation) and Harrods, print advertising and promotional campaigns for fashion (Alberto Aspesi, John Galliano), posters for the V&A Museum and Young Vic Theatre in London.

A highly successful retrospective of Oliver’s work in Nantes, France in 1992, led to further shows in Paris, Tokyo, Los Angeles, the UK and Athens. His work has been collected for the Victoria and Albert Museum archives and is on permanent exhibition in their 20th Century Gallery.

"Vaughan Oliver: visceral pleasures", a design monograph by Rick Poynor for Booth-Clibborn Editions was published in November, 2000.

Joel Gethin Lewis & Pete Hellicar
Partners, Hellicar & Lewis

Hellicar & Lewis are a creative partnership formed in late 2008 by Joel Gethin Lewis and Pete Hellicar. The partnership was founded to blend the analogue and the digital, to make experiences and systems in the real world that create memories. Current clients include the V&A, Selfridges, B Store and Top Shop.

Previously, Joel Gethin Lewis was the Interaction Designer at United Visual Artists, working with clients such as U2, Massive Attack, Nokia and the British Council. He is one of the founders of the Interaction Design meetup, This Happened.

Pete Hellicar co-founded Unabomber Skateboards in 1997, and in 2001 became art director for Etnies worldwide, responsible for the re- branding of the entire Etnies brand. Returning to the UK in 2004, he has continued to art direct campaigns for Etnies, alongside design and consultancy work for a broad range of clients including; New Balance, Foot Patrol, 4creative and Orange.

links http://www.hellicarandlewis.com

Richard Hooker
Designer and Art Director, Wieden + Kennedy

Richard studied Graphic Design at the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. He joined Wieden + Kennedy London in 2000, where he's worked as a designer / art director for almost 9 years. During that time he's worked on many projects for clients such as Nike, Honda, the Guardian and Nokia, and done some time on the mothership, Wieden + Kennedy Portland. In his spare time he takes pictures, and last year took some time out to ride a bicycle through Chilean Patagonia.

links http://www.wk.com

Matt Dent
Designer

Matt studied Graphic Design at the University of Brighton. After leaving he did some work placements in between scrounging around for money, and answering to the job centre. That was pretty rubbish.

But 12 months in New Zealand and Australia (2004-2005) sorted him out. He got a job at 3 fish in a tree, moved to London, and responded to an open competition hosted by The Royal Mint. His design was selected as the option of choice to appear on the reverses of new coinage (1p - £1), the launch of which took place in April 2008.

Since the launch he’s been asked to contribute thoughts to interviews and words to talks, getting involved in all kinds of enjoyable things and meeting some inspiring people. The coin designs were nominated for a D&AD award in April.

He has recently been made a director of the 3 fish in a tree.

Alex Bec & Will Hudson
Partners, HudsonBec

HudsonBec believe in finding relevant, creative solutions to problems that are tailored to the specific need of the client and their audience. Whether the outcome is a classic print or online design solution, or a more involved campaign combining event management and art direction, their emphasis is on a quality of execution that is suitable for each project.

As a portfolio of work it might seem a little difficult to put your finger on exactly what they do, but to pigeonhole them would be to miss the point completely. They’ve produced work that includes art directing photo-shoots, helping an established publisher engage with a new audience, designing record covers and in-store sets, managing events and workshops to help draw traffic to physical spaces and websites, publishing, editing and designing a magazine and curating their own exhibitions.

Alongside commercial work they also run creative blog It's Nice That http://www.itsnicethat.com, which reaches a worldwide audience of over 130,000 unique people every month, who look for a daily source of inspiration and reference. They also continue to develop their annual self-initiated project If You Could http://www.ifyoucould.co.uk that allows them to work with the most exciting emerging and established practitioners in the industry.

links http://www.hudsonbec.com, http://www.itsnicethat.com

Jamie Wieck
Designer & Illustrator, Airside

Jamie joined Airside following his graduation from Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design and. He enjoys problem solving and attempts to approach each project in an unexpected way, taking the inevitable (and crushing) rejection that comes with 'out-of- the-box-thinking' firmly on the chin.

Bizarrely for a graphic designer with little fashion sense he's managed to appear in Glamour magazine.

links http://www.airside.co.uk

John Bateson
Principal & Consultant at Bateson Studio

On leaving Liverpool and moving south John worked as a senior designer in the Media Development Group at the start up days of The Open University. After various moves he became being the founding partner and creative director of Roundel.

He helped Roundel develop from a small design group to a high profile consultancy winning over fifty D&AD awards for many transport clients including British Rail, Railfreight, Hong Kong Railways and other clients including Zanders, Boots, DSTL, M&S and Royal Mail.

In 2005 he joined Corporate Edge (renamed Likemind) as creative director and now he is principal/consultant at Bateson Studio.

He's actively involved in education, won the Design Challenge at the International Conference for Universal Design in Kyoto, is a fellow of the ISTD and chairman of The Typographic Circle Association.

He's always hoping for the perfect solution, he's not there yet, but keeps trying.