Creative from an early age
From around the age of five I found my love of product design and all things creative. I spent a lot of my childhood in my parents garage making toys and models. Spending hours making bikes for my dolls from sheets of acrylic, plaster cast models to paint, and working kites, my path to becoming an award winning product designer began to unravel.
I carried this creative flair right through my school years and on to university, when in 2005 I kick started my design career studying for a product design degree at De Montfort University in Leicester. Over the last 15 years I have honed my skills and experience across a number of different design industries from consumer packaging to prop making for TV and Film.
Director & Senior product designer
I set up Blue Dots Design Ltd as a Product Development and Design consultancy company in 2019 after realising there is a need for designers who have a wealth of experience in designing for manufacture as well as just conceptual design.
Lead product designer for Cannondale
Prior to starting my own company I worked as an in-house designer for the parts and accessories (p&a) division for cycling brands Cannondale, Fabric, GT Bikes, and Charge bikes, which all fall under the Cycling Sports Group (CSG) umbrella. Joining CSG as the second product designer for the p&a division meant helping to grow the Fabric brand from a new start up company, to a globally successful one with award winning products. I was the lead designer on hydration, lights, bottle cages and pumps, across all brands, and lastly spent two full years being the lead designer for Cannondale and Fabric cycling helmets. I worked on all stages of the design process from the initial concept generation, through design refinement, prototyping, hand modelling and 3D printing, right through to liaising with – and visiting – factories in Asia and testing first off tooling production components.
Modelmaker
Before Cycling Sports Group, I worked as a project manager for the prototyping and modelmaking company Amalgam Modelmaking. I worked with clients from their initial enquiry right through the model making process to ensure we delivered a prototype that best fitted the clients needs, whether it be a fully functioning model, or one just for visual presentation purposes. I worked on a hugely broad range of projects; from small scale production components for the likes of Herman Miller, Dyson, Toni & Guy, Hoegaarden (the list really is endless) to large one off art installations for artists and architects such as Peter Salter and David Harber.
Packaging designer
And last but not least, my first design position was as a packaging designer for the thermoforming company Deltaform. I worked as part of a small team delivering bespoke consumer packaging solutions for baked goods through to cosmetics. My customer profile includes M&S, Percy Pig, Boots, Sainsbury’s, ASDA, Waitrose and Iceland.