Whilst in London I visited Jared Mankelow. Jared and I go quite far back, as a 17 year old he was working as a cabinet maker, he was always interested and hanging around the design studio.
Whilst in London I visited Jared Mankelow. Jared and I go quite far back, as a 17 year old he was working as a cabinet maker, he was always interested and hanging around the design studio.
Eventually I suggested design school and there has not been alot in his way since. He went on to graduate from Industrial design amongst the top in his class; he worked for Locus Research for a while and then headed to IDEO for an internship with a friend of mine Jo Oliver.
After working for IDEO in San Francisco and in Boston, Jared headed for London and worked for Tangerine where Jonathan Ive started out and is now working for an interesting design company called Therefore.
Therefore is a multidisciplinary consultancy based in Soho in London. They are primarily product designers and engineers. The studio itself occupies four floors and a basement. The entrance is on ground floor and contains some meetings rooms and a reception, waiting area
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The basement contains and pretty established workshop with some CNC equipment for prototyping, and is operated by two full time technicians.
The 1st floor is home to Jared, his workstation is chocked full of a range of visual reference material along with some trends, forecasting material. His desk is littered with some interesting looking sketches related to a new radio they are working on.
There are about 6-8 designers on the floor with one of the directors offices adjacent to Jared’s.The 2nd floor contains a similar layout with another 6 -8 designers and engineers all working away. The Top floor again is similar with another set of the team beavering away.
Therefore also undertakes its own projects such as the presso, a clever expresso maker which does not require power or water supply, but delivers full strength coffee. They also undertake royalty based projects with consumer products where they share in the revenue generated through the sales of the products.
Talking to Jared, there have been a range of companies bringing their design offices to London. Apparently Samsung has created an office recently and LG, Nokia and others have design bases there. This appears to be driven by the available pool of designers in London, perhaps also the fact it has generally become a creative mecca for a wide range of artforms, supplanting the mantel that Milan and Paris had in the 20th century.
