Category: Interviews and features

Tom Lancaster on designing for London

Tom Lancaster graduated from the BA Design course at Goldsmiths in 2005 and he is currently Head of Design at the Greater London Authority. Here he is answering for us a few questions on his time at Goldsmiths, his career path  and designing campaigns for the Mayor of London. 

Q: What does design mean to you? What’s the mission of design in the world?

A: For me, design’s mission is to improve the things we use every day, to make products, communications and services enjoyable, and to dream up ideas that can make life richer. For visual design – that means having a reason to communicate, being clear, offering something original, maybe even charming, and only saying what you need to – not boring your audience or taking their time for granted.

Q: How would you describe your design aesthetic? Continue reading “Tom Lancaster on designing for London”

“Michael” BA Design show 2012

Let’s take a trip down memory lane and remember last year’s BA Design show “Michael”, as we have ready for you a video with a few interviews of exhibiting graduates explaining what their projects were about and how they worked.

The graduates featured here are Tessa Lawer, Ed Fyfe, Olivia Clemence and Henrietta Jadin (but there are more to come). Olivia’s project was also featured on the blog here.

Tree Hub: Elevated Conversations on Design

Last month, during the London Design Festival, design was everywhere- even in a tree house three meters high. Second year BA Design student Belen Palacios had an idea: to take conversations on design in a different space altogether. With support from a group of fellow students, sponsors and many other people who believed in her project, Belen set things in motion, and after a long process of gathering funds, planning, designing and building, Tree Hub became reality and between 12 – 22 September hosted talks on a varied number of current issues, all limited to an exclusive maximum audience of ten. Here’s an interview with Belen in the pavilion on the day before the first talk, when bits and pieces were still being cut and hammered into place. Continue reading “Tree Hub: Elevated Conversations on Design”

Marion Lean: design without labels

 Marion Lean, a graduate of our MA in Design: Critical Practice, aims to take people back to the physical. “It’s not the same as on the phone, or on the Internet. Meeting in real life, you understand the personality of the person you’re talking to.” Continue reading “Marion Lean: design without labels”