Priestman in print

I’m constantly goading designers to get themselves in print – preferably in the national media. You know it makes sense to put yourself in the public eye, particularly where clients might go for inspiration.

Not surprisingly, the creative community has managed quite a bit of this of late, on the back of the London Design Festival and other awareness-raising ventures. Anti Design Festival founder Neville Brody is still ahead in the stakes, having notched up TV and radio appearances as well as eating up the newsprint over the past couple of weeks, but Thomas Heatherwick looks set to challenge him following his well-deserved award of the London Design Medal last night.

Then, today, a rank outsider joined the field in the form of Paul Priestman. The Priestman Goode co-founder made it into the Financial Times’ pink pages with a ‘Business Diary’ of his week.

What a great chance to spell out the scope and geographical spread of project wins such as the contract for interiors for a Middle Eastern airline and the long term deal with China’s Sifang to create new high-speed trains. What an opportunity too to remind the financial community and others what UK design can do and how well it is regarded abroad.

A lovely touch though is Priestman’s admission that he still prefers pen-and-paper sketches as a way of forming and relating ideas – whatever electronic means are used to convey them across the globe.

To check out more, get yourself along to the Hochhauser Auditorium in the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Sackler Centre at 1pm tomorrow to hear him talk about ‘Trains, ships, planes and pebbles’.

For tickets visit click here.