PastPresentFuture Design Manchester

Emily Wood is Course Leader for BA Graphic Design, Camberwell College at University of the Arts London. Specialties: Identity and brands, marketing materials, web design, publications, packaging and exhibition graphics for small to medium-sized businesses, charities, cultural organisations and the public sector.

Christoph Grünberger is a German illustrator and designer. He is active in the fields of corporate, interactive and spatial design, with a strong focus on exploring the limits of interaction and desktop applications. Together with Stefan Gandl he is co-author of the book Neubau Modul and collaborated on the exhibition NeubauIsm at gallery MU (Eindhoven/NL) in 2008, which was opened by Wim Crouwel. For the video installation Wutbürger, a co-operation with Andreas Lutz, he received the excellence Award in the Art section at the Japan Media Arts Festival in Toyko in 2015. His works as a freelance designer have been awarded nationally and internationally.

In 1991, after finishing a BA and MA at Central St Martins in London, Graham Wood co-founded Tomato with Steve Baker, Dirk van Dooren, Karl Hyde and Richard Smith (Underworld), Simon Taylor and John Warwicker. He has worked with agencies worldwide including Wieden and Kennedy, Leagas Delaney, Goodby Silverstein, Crispin Porter, Lowes, TBWA, Chiat Day, Abbot Mead Vickers, Saatchi, Dare, Cheil, SapientNitro, CHI and Dentsu. Exhibitions include V&A and MOMA Permanent Collection, MOCA (San Francisco), BFI collection, onedotzero, The Barbican, Whitechapel Gallery, Parco Tokyo, LaForet Tokyo, Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Jacobson Howard Gallery New York, LEA Gallery London, Scarlett Gallery (Stockholm), AIGA Design Archives etc

Harry Pearce is a graphic designer, accidentalist, eternal optimist and photographer. He studied at Canterbury College of Art. Before joining Pentagram as a partner in 2006, he co-founded and co-ran Lippa Pearce Design for 16 years.

Pearce has worked around the world devising identities, installations, posters, packaging, books and talks for clients as diverse as Liberty, Thames & Hudson, Camden Art Centre, WITNESS, The John Lewis Partnership, Waitrose & Partners No.1, the Royal Academy of Arts, Abu Dhabi cultural quarter, Berry Bros & Rudd, Phaidon Press, Pink Floyd Records, Saks Fifth Avenue, Lloyd’s of London, Shakespeare’s Globe, PEN International, Science Museum and the UN. For Ai Weiwei and Anish Kapoor, he created identities for their major retrospectives at the RA. His work has been exhibited in New York, Paris, London, Toronto and Naples.

Since 1993 he has been an active member of the advisory board for WITNESS, a human rights charity founded by Peter Gabriel. He is also a committed member of Alliance Graphique Internationale and has spoken at design conferences across the globe including Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, USA, India, Holland and Costa Rica.

Pearce is the author of two books, Typographic Conundrums (published in 2009) and Eating with the Eyes (published in 2015).

Katy Cowan is a Manchester-based journalist, writer, and the founding editor of Creative Boom, one of the UK's leading platforms dedicated to the creative industries. Launched in 2009, the site delivers news, inspiration, insight and advice to seven million creative professionals every year. By exploring creativity through the online magazine, podcast, and the entire network, Katy and her team honour the platform's original ethos: to celebrate, inspire and support the creative community, particularly the underrepresented, offering an inclusive space where everyone feels welcome.

Nigel Aono-Billson is a graphic designer, author and design educator. He has run his own design studio, been a partner in another, and worked for a number of established design studios/consultancies with National and International clients. In the early 90s, he worked as a staff designer at the seminal Dutch design studio, Hard Werken, in the Netherlands.

Alongside his design career, Nigel has taught on a number of BA and MA level, Graphic Design and Visual Communication courses in the UK, America, Finland and Thailand. Plus, contributed to the establishment and validation of several Graphic Design and Digital Design Undergraduate courses within the UK and given talks on his creative practice.

He continues to work with a small range of client/commissioners working primarily within publishing and visual identity sectors, here in the UK and Japan. His current clients include Strangers Press and The Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures.