From Kit Miles To Sebastian Cox─Barbara Chandler’s Photo Gallery At The New Designers Expo Celebrates 37 Years Of Creative Talent

Image Courtesy of Barbara Chandler

Every year (though recently scuppered twice by COVID) a vast concentration of new talent in all disciplines of design lights up the Victorian halls of the Business Design Centre in Islington.

The New Designers are in residence bringing the cream of universities and colleges to town over two weeks, with a change-over of exhibitors midway.

Design writer, curator and photographer Barbara Chandler, enchanted by this event, has documented it over many years in the press, also taking photographs of the designers who particularly caught her eye.

Then she meticulously recorded their details in an ongoing commentary on the pioneering social medium of Flickr . Thus she has a huge archive going back some 15 years.

For New Designers 2022, Barbara has selected 37 of these intriguing photo-portraits which will greet visitors in a panoramic display as they enter New Designers.

Barbara is perhaps best known for her long-running design pages in the Evening Standard which stretch back over 20 years.

She’s also a photographer who’s published her images of London in a book and on photographic merchandise for brands such as John Lewis, with a current range of photo-tea towels at the Futon Company.

Her prints and handmade cards have sold in London (notably at Habitat and at the Conran Shop), in Paris, Milan, New York, Tokyo and Warsaw.

When reporting on design, Barbara has made a habit of photographing designers with their work, and it’s become a bit of a trademark.

Her show Joy of Design was at Design Junction in 2013, and can still be viewed at www.joyofdesign.net, featuring stars of design such as Philippe Starck, Tom Dixon, the late Sir Terence Conran, Sir Kenneth Grange and over 60 more faces, including many that were new at the time.

“But my photo-portraits at New Designers are very special to me,” Barbara says. “I have been privileged since New Designers started over 35 years ago to plug into this superb spread of excellence from our many, many excellent universities and art and craft colleges. And around 15 years ago I decide to document in photographs sparked by two encounters in particular in 2009. One was with Christopher Pollard, a car designer from Coventry University whose amazing punk hairstyle echoed the design of his car beside him. And the other with Sarah Hemingray, from Leeds Arts University whose beautiful composure reflected the pattern of her Art Nouveau Mucha-inspired wallpaper.” 

Since then there have been hundreds – “I think actually it must be thousands” - of images, and choosing 35 was certainly a challenge. But Barbara has endeavoured to present inclusive designer portraits over a wide spread of disciplines. 

“Though it is the sheer brilliance of the textiles that always blows me away. This is an area in which the UK truly excels, which oddly is not often reflected in shows in our more august design museums.”

Other images Barbara particularly loves include that of Henry Franks, of Northumbria University, Young Designer of the Year 2013, whose “double-handled” coat hanger represents research into design and dyslexia. He now has his own design agency.

Unquestionably original was Sam Lander from Manchester Metropolitan University (2018) who had developed a new material from discarded take-away polystyrene food packaging and turned it into a radiant sculptural lightshade.

“He was/is inventor personified and I was able to further foster his design career; he now has his own brand/workshop.” 

Barbara’s trained eye for a story spotted many ingénues now gone global, noticeably furniture designer and eco-pioneer Sebastian Cox, and surface pattern designer Kit Miles (2012), fresh from the RCA, and showing at One Year On (having previously exhibited with Loughborough University in 2009).

“And I so loved Nadia Boutarfa from the University of Central Lancashire (2013) who had designed her own head scarf.”

Barbara Chandler has been writing about design and decoration for over 40 years.

Thus she has made numerous visits to New Designers, and was a personal friend of its founder, the late Peta Levi.

Over the past 15 years, she has been recording these visits with her camera and has meticulously documented the legion of new designers that caught her eye.

But how did she choose which ones to photograph. She explains:  “Sometimes it was the person, sometimes the work – usually both. How could I not photograph such abundant, original and visually-arresting talent?”

Here we celebrate 37 years of New Designers with 37 photo-portraits from Barbara’s extensive archive, which you can see in full on her Flickr pages.

The photographs cover a large range of Universities and disciplines and represent New Designer’s unique position as a showcase of excellence for UK graduating talent.

As there was not a physical show for New Designers 2020 and 2021, due to Covid, Barbara went out into England to photograph graduates in their place of study, visiting many Universities from Plymouth in the South West to Manchester in the North. She also visited the many shows graduates managed to hold in London. “I felt that in an exhibition planned for 2022, we could not possibly overlook these ‘lost years’ of excellent graduating potential.”

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