Scholars consult top designer

This Tuesday, ten of Repton’s design students, many of them holders of the prestigious national Arkwright Scholarship, headed off to the London offices of design consultancy SeymourPowell (SP), to meet with Associate Design Director, Matt Tidnam.

Having originally been planned as an in-school visit, the whole group were delighted to make the trip to London, and to be able to see one of the world’s premier design consultancies in action was a real priviledge.

Sandwiched between a greengrocers and an Italian Deli, SP’s humble exterior concealed a complex of state of the art workshops, studios and offices. Once inside, the group was welcomed by Matt Tidnam, Associate Design Director, who has worked at SP since 1997, and featured in the BBC’s recent series James May’s Big Ideas. Reptonians enjoyed browsing examples of the countless products that SP have been involved in designing and developing, and Miss Hill watched in wonderment as SP’s Dick Powell himself sauntered down the stairs and engaged the pupils in conversation – the highlight of the day for many. For Miss Hill, it could only have been beaten if she had witnessed Richard Seymour arrive on his infamous motorbike!

The group were treated to a talk from Matt, as he described how he came to work in design, and his experiences since joining SP, offering a valuable insight into what it would be like to work for a design consultancy such as SP. He then went on to discuss many of SP’s past, present and future projects, ranging from Tefal’s innovative Aquaspeed iron to the EVN bike, the world’s first working hydrogen cell motorbike, and the frighteningly futuristic Virgin Galactic project.

Matt also introduced the principle that, in the modern world, design is something that is all around us, all of the time, which the SP design ethos of ‘Making things better: Better for people, better for business and better for the world’ is based upon. This will have sounded familiar to the A Level students present, but younger Reptonians also grasped the importance of taking this, and similar concepts, into consideration when completing their design work.

The visit was a tremendous opportunity for all present to gain an understanding of where a career in design might lead for these ambitious Reptonians when the shackles of A Levels and further education are released. Miss Hill even suggested that she would be less than surprised to see some of this crop of young designers go on to hold their own talk as Associate Design Director in years to come – high praise indeed.