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.

I was born in the mid 1980's and grow up in London. From always having a fascination with mechanical objects and relentlessly playing with lego as a child becoming a still life photographer seemed like a natural progression. There is something enormously rewarding about creating exactly whats in your head. I try and make my images on first glance look completely perfect but on closer inspection its revealed there are many imperfections, if you look closer at the 'Wrapping Paper Series' you can see all the joins and creases. I think this makes it look and feel like a photograph and not CGI.

I'm an Interiors and Still Life Photographer, based in London. Kristy was raised in 14 houses over the 18 years she grew up in North Yorkshire. It may be this steady flow of homes, and way of living, that led to her curiosity to shape the everyday. Her love of photography was cemented in the Autumn of 2005 while spending six months at university in Springfield, Missouri, developing her calm, clean and focussed style while photographing with her Mamiya C330. She draws influence from American and European Modernist architecture, along with suburban imagery from the 1950’s onwards, creating surreal and playful imagery hinged on her desire to form intrigue, through line, form and arrangement.

Graphic Designer

Ben is an artist and graphic designer. He resides in Hackney Wick, London where he runs his own personal practice, the creative partnership 'Booth/Kelly' with designer John Booth and 'Hackney Wick Life Drawing' alongside fellow artist Ben Wakeling. His work has featured in multiple group exhibitions and in March 2019 had his first solo exhibition at Stour Space Gallery.