100% Design names Dixon as creative chief

Tom Dixon has been named creative director of 100% Design’s flagship London events, Design Week can reveal.

Signed up this week by 100% Design exhibition director Peter Massey, Dixon (pictured) is charged with the design direction of the London show events taking place this September before starting on a more significant overhaul of next year’s events. Dixon is to begin working on a new masterplan for the 2008 show next January.

Under the auspices of his Tom Dixon design consultancy, he becomes responsible for the design of the main 100% Design space itself, plus those for the sister events 100% Light, 100% Detail and the newly announced 100% Futures – a showcase for young talent – which replaces 100% East.

For the first time, the four events – collectively renamed 100% Design London – will occupy the entire floorspace of both Earls Court exhibition centres. It is hoped that co-locating the Futures event next to the main 100% Design event will improve the crossover between established and new designers and manufacturers.

‘It needs a bit more space,’ says Dixon, ‘and Earls Court can be a bit cold, so I want to give it a little more humanity.’

Dixon says one of his primary aims is to ensure that 100% Design is used more socially, and as a centre of the London Design Festival.

Dixon is understood to have competed with two other candidates in a credentials pitch to Reed Exhibitions. Massey confirms that the show organiser did invite other candidates to present their ideas, but declines to name them.

Dixon’s appointment coincides with the rebranding of the 100% franchise by Pentagram Design this week.

Pentagram partner Angus Hyland was appointed to redraw the visual identity, to review the brand architecture and to design the show’s summer print advertising. Hyland says the 100% part of the logo has not been touched, but the other elements have been reworked geometrically with a modern, contemporary positioning.

‘It’s not really a reluanch, but more of an evolution of 100%. This work we are doing with Pentagram is about taking the brand slightly more upscale,’ says Massey.

The new look will be applied to its London and overseas events, plus future launches from the 100% stable.

Massey adds that a new overseas show will be announced in September based in an ‘exciting, vibrant, design-conscious’ city, outside of Europe.