The Burning Question: A Question of Design
We can’t wait for our *Sold Out* event “The Burning Question” coming up next Tuesday at The Black Box Belfast (sign up for the waiting list) and featuring host Graeme Watson interviewing 3 design speakers: Paul Ryding, Anita Murphy & Christopher Murphy! We thought this event would be a great way about opening up debate and discussion around contemporary design and to hear from people living and breathing the designer lifestyle and getting involved with lots of exciting creative projects as well as facing and dealing with all the challenges they come up against.
Paul Ryding is a Belfast-based commercial illustrator who has worked on a professional capacity since graduating from the Glasgow School of Art in 2003. He worked for 4 years at the Association of Illustrators as the core membership advisor, where he was exposed to the inner workings of contemporary illustration as a viable profession.
He has also continued to promote ethical practices within the Illustration industry as a lecturer and an external adviser. He has also held several talks on contemporary illustration as well as writing for a number of journals including Varoom magazine.
He was most recently commissioned through Spiegel & Grau to illustrate the cover of Rest In Power: the enduring life of Trayvon Martin” as written by his parents Sybrina Fulton & Tracy Martin.
Paul’s clients include: Kesselskramer, WIRED, Adidas, Santander, Foreign Policy, BBC, Toronto Marlies, The Guardian, Politico, Creative Review, Drygate, Fortune Magazine, Spiegel & Grau, Easyjet, Modus, Brewbot, Bauer Media, Desert Companion, American Airlines, Random House, Institutional Investor, Sharp Magazine, ALM Media, INK publishing, Prospect Magazine, ESPN, Archant Media, Holland & Barrett, Cincinatti Magazine.
Anita Murphy is the director and co-founder of The Creativity Hub, a publisher of games and playthings that foster imagination, empathy and self esteem. They are best known for the storytelling game Rory’s Story Cubes, which is sold in 50 countries around the world. Anita created The Extraordinaires Design Studio, an award-winning activity kit to introduce children to the world of invention, design and creative problem solving.
Anita’s background is in Graphic and Web Design. She worked in User Experience in BBC Technology for 6 years before co-founding the company. She also lectured in Interface Design in Trinity College Dublin. She holds a B.A. Design (Visual Communications) from Dublin Institute of Technology and an MSc (Computer Based Learning) from Queen’s University Belfast.
Anita, originally from Leixlip, Co.Kildare, now lives in Belfast with her partner Rory, co-founder of The Creativity Hub, and their three daughters ages thirteen, eleven and nine.
Christopher Murphy is a writer, designer and educator based in Belfast. Adrian Shaughnessy, writing for Creative Review, described him as, “a William Morris for the digital age,” an epithet he aspires to fulfil, daily.
The author of numerous books, collectively covering a multidisciplinary approach towards design, he has written for a wide variety of publications worldwide, including: Five Simple Steps, Offscreen, 8 Faces and The Manual; in addition to publishing the world’s most compact typography journal, Glyph.
Informing his role as an educator, Murphy is a practicing designer whose work spans a variety of media, both analogue and digital. His work has featured in numerous magazines and books including Eye Magazine, widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading design journals.
An internationally respected speaker, he is regularly invited to talk on a range of topics, including: the importance of improving design education; exploring how design is changing; and the importance of growing ‘ideas cultures’. He has spoken at conferences worldwide, including: Build, New Adventures and, most recently, on the topic of mental health in the technology sector, at Brooklyn Beta.
A writer/performer of comedy for over seven years, Graeme Watson has been a leading light in the development of the Northern Ireland comedy scene since 2007, and is the director of the live comedy development and production project The Infinite Jest, as well as being a co-founder and current chair of the Belfast Comedy Festival. He is currently developing his debut solo show ‘Get Happy’ for the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
This event is part of Creativity Month 2017.
