Adrian Westaway Co-founder & Director of Technology and Magic at Special Projects Adrian is an inventor, engineer and experience designer on a mission to make the human-technology interaction meaningful and delightful. As co-founder of Special Projects he harnesses technology, inclusive research and magic thinking to devise design propositions that feel familiar yet wondrous. A self-taught magician since the age of 11 and full member of the Magic Circle, he relentlessly pursues his conviction that “designers should use magic thinking and try to introduce surprise, delight and fuzzy feeling in the things they create.” After becoming the first ever James Dyson Fellow in 2007, and a Fellow of the Royal Commission of 1851, in 2010, for his work on interactive lighting systems, Adrian built a playground in Peru, had whisky with Derren Brown as a student in Bristol, and tried to make his teachers disappear. His contagious passion for magic and engineering made him a beloved tutor and lecturer in Design & Innovation at Queen Mary University and the Royal College of Art, in London and a visiting faculty member at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design. There he teaches ‘Magic and Design’, a nomadic workshop where students are introduced to methods of using design and technology to create enchanted products and experiences.

Sirli Raitma is a London based photographer. Sirli’s images span portraiture, landscapes and interiors, but portraiture – especially involving ambiguity via costume or displacement – is her heartland.

Emmanuelle is a Swiss-Canadian animation director and illustrator living in London. She studied animation at the world renown Gobelins school in Paris. She's been working for international client since 2004, and published a few illustrated books too.

Vanessa Pelz-Sharpe is a writer and broadcaster. Born and bred in London, she has written for a number of independent magazines and newspapers, including The Guardian, Illustrated Ape, and Pen Pusher, and was Contributing Editor for literary magazine Full Moon Empty Sports Bag. She co-hosts Letters You Never Sent, a monthly literary radio show on NTS. Pelz-Sharpe recently won a Cosmopolitan Magazine Blog Award for her blog Nightmares and Boners and is currently working on her first novel.

Illustrator and designer Melvin Galapon was born in the South of England in 1981, yet hails from Burnley a small town in the Northwest of England. A graduate from Central St. Martin’s he has worked with the likes of Wallpaper*, The New York Times, Nike and Nokia to name but a few. He has been featured in various magazines worldwide and has exhibited in Tokyo, London and Singapore. Galapon is currently based in London where he works on a prolific mix of Illustrations, Installations and Design work.