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.

London based theatre maker and actor. 

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.

North London-based artist Georgina McNamara graduated from the MA Fine Art course at St Martins in September 2011.  Her work is currently on show in Bloomberg New Contemporaries at London's ICA which runs until 15 January 2012.

Illustrator