Richard Stevens: Creativity Reviewed Seminar #BCFAOpen
Our Creativity Reviewed Seminar will take place at BCFA Open Spring Design on Tuesday the 28th March at 4:30pm, London – The Old Truman Brewery. Register for this event here.
Our carefully selected panel of industry leaders will include Richard Stevens, Founder & Creative Director of forpeople; a firm which has grown to over 90 people today and whose talent, experience and consumer knowledge has led to the development of strong relationships with premium global brands such as British Airways, The Boeing Company, BMWi, The Coca-Cola Company, Cunard, Fujitsu, Intercontinental Hotels Group, Herman Miller, Panasonic and Yamaha. At our Creativity Reviewed Seminar Richard will be joined by our BCFA Open Key Note Speaker Wayne Hemingway, alongside David Smalley – Director at Mix Media, Scott Barwick – Design Associate at Map Project Office, Lara Marrero – Strategy Director & Retail Practice Leader at Gensler and Adrian Weidmann – Industrial Designer for Foster+Partners.
Our expert panel will delve in to the topic of Creativity; as a small taster we asked each panellist 4 short questions about what creativity means to them. Here we enjoy Richard Stevens answers:
What inspires your work?
If I am honest I’m not often inspired by other designers. And I am really not interested in design for designs sake. All our work – design for products, services, experiences – starts with how people feel, think and do. And it ends with improving people’s lives – because if design isn’t for people, what’s it for?
Where do you go for inspiration?
My biggest source of inspiration is where I come from. I grew up on the Isles of Scilly – on a small island with only one hundred inhabitants, surrounded by the sea (the Herman Miller project codename was ‘Tresco’ after one of the islands). So I feel most inspired up when I am either in or on the water at home in Cornwall or on the Isles of Scilly.
When are you most creative?
When I’m not at home I spend a lot of my time travelling (mostly on airplanes) which gives me a lot of quiet time to think and work without distraction.
What does creativity look like to you?
Design/creativity is about doing the right thing for the right reasons. It isn’t about decoration. It’s about striving to anticipate the best answer to a real customer need, in a way that works for business and the world around us. So our first task is always to find out as much as we can about who we are designing for and why. Then, everything we create is based on that understanding of people’s everyday lives – design never happens in isolation- we all experience design as part of our everyday lives, so that’s the way we have to think about it.
How would you answer these questions? We would love to hear your opinions of creativity in our comments section below or on twitter @DesignInsider1