Seymour and Powell

    (£17,000 - £25,000)

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Biography

As a powerful design change engine, Richard Seymour and Dick Powell have designed many of the items we all have in our homes. They offer a perspective on the shape of things to come that goes beyond academic forecasting. Either individually or together, they explain how to foster creativity.

Since forming their design consultancy in 1984, Richard Seymour and Dick Powell have built their company into one of the most powerful ‘change engines’ in the design business.  They have worked with clients as diverse as:

• Casio; they created the iconoclastic Baby G watches
• Tefal; they created the world’s first Cordless Kettle
• Nokia; they helped to develop the company from a manufacturer of wellington boots to the 5th most valuable brand in the world
• Ford’s Premier Automobile Division; where they have helped develop the ‘genome’ of some of the world’s best-known vehicle brands.

At least half of Seymour Powell’s output is never seen by the general public, as it is focused on ‘deep futures’ development for many of the world’s best known brand names; work which forms a future for companies as far as 8 years ahead.   To do this, Richard and Dick have had to build a very special kind of company - one that literally lives in the future.

It’s fair to say that authors, journalists, filmmakers and pundits imagine the future. But designers, working at the level that Richard and Dick do, create the future. They know what the railway trains of 2008, the cellular telephones of 2006, the kitchen appliances of 2005 and the wristwatches of the day after tomorrow look like…because they’ve already designed them.

However, Richard and Dick are probably best known to the general public through their television series ‘Designs on your…’ and ‘Better by Design’.  These programmes followed the duo though a series of extremely taxing design projects, each one aimed at redesigning the everyday objects that blight us on a daily basis, from home security and kitchen bins to lavatories and female underwear.  As an unexpected bonus their bra concept, the BioForm for Charnos, became a runaway market success, becoming Britain’s fastest-selling bra on the run-up to Christmas 2000.

But there is one thing that unites all the kitchen appliances, watches, motorcycles, brassieres and aircraft interiors they create - each one began by looking at people: how we think, how we behave, how we dream and how we live.  ‘Making things better for People’ is Seymour Powell’s mantra.

To do this, again and again, for companies of such extraordinary diversity of culture and discipline has required a robust and revolutionary approach to innovation and creativity in an industrial context.  It doesn’t matter how brilliant an idea is if it can’t be technically realised.  It doesn’t matter how exciting a new technology is if it has no human relevance.  Balancing these factors deftly at the early stage of a product’s creation is the make or break of a better product or service.

They have created a crucible in which the most exciting and radical ideas can become real, and it is upon this subject that they speak most fluently and passionately: How to establish the environment that fosters creative thought, whilst applying techniques and processes which accelerate the innovation process.

Richard and Dick, both together and individually, have many years experience portraying their approach to problem solving in an entertaining, engaging and dynamic fashion, both on network television and in live speeches and workshops. They combine state-of-the-art multimedia presentation material with compelling narrative to stimulate and educate at the same time, to audiences as diverse as secondary school children and battle-hardened corporate mandarins.

Each presentation is specifically targeted, both in terms of content and delivery, to the specific audience requirements.

To book Richard and Dick for your event, please contact Parliament on

+44 (0) 1202 24 24 24