Grinyer moves to experience Orange

Clive Grinyer is quitting the Design Council in March after two years to join telecoms giant Orange as director of Orange World customer experience.

The job will be ‘to pull together all the user interface of the product, including mobile phones and websites’, he says. It will involve the content of the experience and mean working with Microsoft in the US on software, with global suppliers and service providers.

Grinyer says Orange realises that reliance on technology isn’t the key to the future. It’s more to do with the quality of the experience for Orange users.

It is thought Grinyer will report to Nick Balderson, vice-president for product and infrastructure development within Orange World.

As Design Council director of design and innovation, Grinyer has worked on initiatives such as Design Demonstrations (see News, page 5), bringing together designers and client companies. He has also chaired Design Unity, the umbrella organisation linking design’s five main representative bodies, for the past 12 months.

British Design & Art Direction chief executive David Kester, who becomes Design Council chief executive on 1 April, says Grinyer’s move marks ‘huge sadness for the council. He is a towering figure there’, but says the Orange job is ‘fantastic’ and ‘a huge challenge’.

He says, ‘There is no question that there will be a speedy replacement [for Grinyer] at the Design Council.’ The successful candidate will, he says, be ‘someone with very broad experience as a designer or design director, someone who can think deeply’.

Design Council chief executive Andrew Summers will be leading the search though it will be Kester’s appointment. He says the council will be advertising for ‘someone passionate about design and about promoting design to business and Government’.