Hello and happy New Year! I’m really excited to be back at my desk after a wonderful break and I thought I’d kick things off by reflecting on the last year. I’m really bad at taking the time to be proud of what I’ve achieved, so I’ve got into the habit of making some time over the holidays to do just that. And wow – what a year 2014 was! I worked harder than I’ve ever worked in my life (although I’m sure I said that last year!), but I had a absolute ball. I’m really proud of my 2014 and very grateful to all the people who helped me make it happen.
January saw 2014 confessions of a design geek bursary winner Fanny Shorter and the four shortlisted designers, Annabel Perrin, Keith Varney, Taz Pollard and Nancy Straughan exhibit at Home London as part of their prize. Alongside the opportunity to exhibit, Fanny won a bursary worth £10,000 including bespoke wall coverings for her stand from wallunica, her products stocked in the Southbank Centre Shop and included in the window display, a photo shoot, a film shoot, one year’s Design Trust Business Club membership, and mentoring from: Head of Buying at The Southbank Centre Shop, Adam Thow; David Gorrod, Seen PR; Keith Stephenson and Mark Hampshire, Mini Moderns; winner of Best Stand at Home 2013, Jo Robinson, HAM; Justyna Sowa, Decorum; Daniel Nelson, October Communications; Director of The Design Trust, Patricia van den Akker and 2013′s winner Jessica Hogarth. A massive thank you to everyone involved – the bursary is one of the most awesome things I do every year and I couldn’t do it without you. We’ve just announced the 2015 winner and I can’t wait to do it all again.
February was the Stockholm Furniture Fair – one of the fairs I most look forward to every year, mostly due to Greenhouse, a huge showcase of graduate designers. It was lovely to see my favourite Swedes, Note Design Studio (above) and Farg & Blanche, and I even had time to go and see the only preserved 17th century ship in the world – at the Vasa Museum. Absolutely mind-blowing! February was also the month I met magCulture‘s Jeremy Leslie, but more on that later!
In March I started working with Desso, a collaboration that resulted in Best In Class, an exhibition of graduate design talent I curated for them just before Christmas. I couldn’t have been prouder when I saw the exhibition in the flesh for the first time and it’s all credit to Desso that they’re willing to invest in new designers in this way. Thank you to all the team at Desoo and at Hatrick PR for not only making it possible, but such a pleasure.
I also started writing for Dezeen in March and I’m proud to say I’ve been asked back every week since – I absolutely love working with the team there – and doing nothing all day but writing about design makes my heart sing!
April was Milan Design Week, another annual highlight. I had the honour of interviewing Martino Gamper and Stefan Scholten of Scholten & Baijings and worked with Crane TV on behalf of Design Milk on a series of films. I have been writing for Design Milk in my role as Editor at Large for four years now and I am very grateful to this day to Editor in Chief Jaime Derringer for giving me my very first design writing opportunity.
May was Clerkenwell Design Week which presented the opportunity for me to be “in conversation with” Sir Kenneth Grange, which was an absolute treat! I had to pinch myself halfway through – it really was an honour to interview such a design legend. Here’s the 16 minute edit of the interview – I’m afraid it just seemed rude to edit it down any more than that!
A massive thank you to Elspeth at CDW and Anglepoise for making that happen.
In June I took part in the Dulux 5K Colour Run to raise money for Out Of The Dark – a fantastic social enterprise that teams skilled furniture makers with troubled young people to pass on skills and build confidence. Massive thank yous to Zoe Brewer for organising it and to the rest of our team of design bloggers: Will, Toby, Kate, Pippa, Jo and Caroline for the most fun I’ve had in a long time!
July was the month that we raised £16,332 on Kickstarter (against a target of £14,000) to fund the first issue Fiera Magazine. I still can’t quite believe we did that! The list of people to thank is long and I’m bound to forget someone, but I’ll start with a huge thank you to Jeremy Leslie and Jese Siu at magCulture for joining me on team Fiera and designing such a wonderful magazine. Thanks also to Daniel Nelson for our Kickstarter film, Yeshen Venema and Adam Hollier for their photography skills and The New Craftsmen for hosting the Kickstarter kick-off party – and another big thank you to my team of helpers that evening: Caroline, Daisy, Belinda, Jo, Leyton, Clare, David and Jess – we couldn’t have done it without you. And of course to every single one of you who pledged and helped to spread the word (not least Leda Scholey who must be responsible for badgering at least half of our supporters into pledging!)
And as if that wasn’t enough excitement, July was also the month I had my first feature published by the Telegraph Magazine, an article about the wonderful Sebastian Cox. Thank you to both Seb for the fabulous day’s coppicing that led to that feature and to David Nicholls who commissioned it.
In August I was invited to Bergen for the preview of 100{ff546b69e23b1524d799f96c6ba7a638e1f677053b0a2a1568b05315fd5f8fc7} Norway, which was a wonderful trip – many thanks to the Bergen Academy of Art and Design for hosting and to the wonderful Sabine Zettler for organising – it was a fabulous 24 hours in Norway!
September is of course the London Design Festival and it was the first fair I covered for Fiera Magazine, so that was an added excitement. In previous years I’ve curated a showcase of design graduates, BRINK, and I’ve worked with R&A Collaborations on a series of films – this year, I decided to keep it simple and focus on the coverage for Fiera, confessions and Design Milk, which turned out to be a wise move – there was a lot to see!
October was a bit of a crazy month with trips to Prague for Designblok, Poland for the Lodz Design Festival and Belgium’s Kortrijk for the Bienniale Interieur – it was an absolute whirlwind and I saw some incredible design. Big thanks to the teams at Soffa Magazine, Culture.pl and Fashion Flanders Institute for looking after me so well and making sure we saw some non-design related sights too!
And in November (well technically very early December) I got to hold in my hands for the very first time, a copy of Fiera Magazine. It was a moment I will never forget – the highlight of my year, if not my career. There are many, many people to thank for that moment, most of whom I forgot to thank in the magazine (note to self, for Issue 2, don’t write that page very late the night before the artwork deadline!), so here goes… the biggest thank you goes to Jeremy without whom it would not be the magazine it is. It really is an honour to work with such a talented magazine designer. Thanks also to all the contributors and especially to the editors on the 100 Words project: Sarah Farley, John Fountain, Robert Preece, Frank Mamapey and Elena Bowes who got missed in my list of thank yous in the magazine. Thank you to Ellie Parker and Sara Norrman for their tireless efforts and words of encouragement, and to my lovely Dad for proofreading the entire thing! Thanks to Venn Design for our fabulous website (and for getting it live with very little input from the crazy busy design and editorial teams!) And as with everything I do, thanks to Jo Ham, Rebekeh O’Carroll, Lisa Lewins and Leyton Allen-Scholey – my biggest supporters.
So, I hope you’ll forgive me for having largely taking December off! I really enjoyed a much needed holiday in Thailand, a trip to see my family in Cornwall and a leisurely Christmas at home. I hope you had a good break too – and of course my last thank you is to you. Thank you so much for reading, commenting, and sharing – your feedback really does make all the hard work that goes into running a blog worth every minute. If you’re not already, do follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest and I look forward to sharing another wonderful year with you. confessions of a design geek turns five in April and I’ve got lots of exciting plans up my sleeve, so watch this space! (And if you haven’t already nabbed one, make sure you get your copy of Fiera Issue 1.)
