Pentagram pair joins Factory

Two senior Pentagram staff have left to join Factory Design, set up last year by two ex-Seymour Powell partners.

They join Factory this Tuesday as managing director and third creative director respectively.

Peter Tennent was consultancy design manager at Pentagram, and Gavin Thomson, who had been with Pentagram for a decade, was a senior designer on Kenneth Grange’s product design team.

Factory was established by Adam White and Adrian Berry, who were both at Pentagram before joining Seymour Powell (DW 7 February 1997).

Tennent describes his role as, “translating product design as a business tool into the language of the business community, and allowing designers not to become deflected from their task”.

The new additions will make Factory “twice as big at the top”, says founder partner White, who wants to expand the group “laterally”. He says of the appointments: “It was clear from the start that we didn’t want to grow the company by growing a tail… We thought if we imposed people on us, telling us what to do, it would keep us and the consultancy lively and on our toes.”

“It’s something we want to carry on doing, primarily with further creative directors of other disciplines,” he adds. From Tuesday, Factory will be six-strong.

The four directors shared past at Pentagram has shown them the value of working with different disciplines, says White.

Thomson’s vacancy at Pentagram is likely to be filled from within, says a consultancy spokeswoman. Grange’s product design team is now eight-strong. He was unavailable to comment on any plans to replace Tennent.