James Melia

blondFounder and Creative Director

James Melia is Founder and Creative Director of London design agency blond — currently ranked the No.1 design consultancy (Europe and Americas) by the Red Dot Design Awards. After a successful spell as an in-house design manager, he worked for some of London’s famous design houses, including PriestmanGoode — where he was part of the team that created the revolutionary Qsuite business class seat for Qatar Airways — before founding blond in 2015. James set up blond with a vision to create a thoughtful studio, underpinned by a conscientious ethos for both work and employment practices — with a design process centred on Conscious Design™. Conscious Design is to be socially, economically and environmentally aware of the impact design has on people, places, and the systems that sustain them. He instils the values of Conscious Design; usefulness, deliberateness and awareness into blond’s team of designers, thinkers and strategists — which informs blond’s sustainably-minded design process.

During his prolific career, James has worked with exciting startups and many of the world’s most successful brands across a plethora of sectors, including AkzoNobel, Beko, Collins Aerospace, Coway, Cuprinol, Dulux, Epson, Fujitsu, Fussy, Hasbro, Haier, Impulse, Lego, LG, Microsoft, Nokia, Panasonic, Philips, Revolut, Samsung, Sony, Technics, Technogym, TomTom, Qatar Airways and Virgin Atlantic.