DurrellBishop.com
MY JOURNEY
Two themes run through my work, reflecting my two MAs. The first concerns aesthetics and how objects communicate — rooted in Product Design. The second explores behaviour, systems and new ways of doing things enabled by computers — grounded in Computer Related Design.
What interests me is the point where these meet: when an object doesn’t merely contain technology or describe aspirations, but visualises the systems it belongs to — when form becomes a useful readable language. I’ve worked across a period in which design shifted from largely mechanical products to computational, networked systems, and my practice has been about connecting those worlds.
My father was a modernist graphic designer and my mother a photographer. I wanted to invent.
As an industrial design student in the 1980s I encountered the work on product semantics at the RCA. It asked a simple question that has stayed with me: what is the form of a product when it appears to have no form — electronics?
After experimenting with batch production and working as an industrial designer at Moggridge Associates, I returned to college. I was intrigued that graphics lived in 2D and products in 3D, while the tools beginning to arrive were clearly blending physical form and screens. I learnt to program and work with electronics to explore this overlap.
In 1992, for an Apple interview, I made the Marble Answer Machine in a single Sunday. It proposed something simple: that digital information need not live behind buttons and text. A message could have physical presence; you could pick it up, move it, and change its context by handling it. The following year, in Apple’s Human Interface Group, I worked with Jonathan Cohen on a physical Mac interface in which files and applications could be handled through paper. I continued this line of inquiry as a researcher at the RCA.
What interests me is the point where these meet: when an object doesn’t merely contain technology or describe aspirations, but visualises the systems it belongs to — when form becomes a useful readable language. I’ve worked across a period in which design shifted from largely mechanical products to computational, networked systems, and my practice has been about connecting those worlds.
My father was a modernist graphic designer and my mother a photographer. I wanted to invent.
As an industrial design student in the 1980s I encountered the work on product semantics at the RCA. It asked a simple question that has stayed with me: what is the form of a product when it appears to have no form — electronics?
After experimenting with batch production and working as an industrial designer at Moggridge Associates, I returned to college. I was intrigued that graphics lived in 2D and products in 3D, while the tools beginning to arrive were clearly blending physical form and screens. I learnt to program and work with electronics to explore this overlap.
In 1992, for an Apple interview, I made the Marble Answer Machine in a single Sunday. It proposed something simple: that digital information need not live behind buttons and text. A message could have physical presence; you could pick it up, move it, and change its context by handling it. The following year, in Apple’s Human Interface Group, I worked with Jonathan Cohen on a physical Mac interface in which files and applications could be handled through paper. I continued this line of inquiry as a researcher at the RCA.
The Answer Machine later became associated with what came to be called Tangible User Interfaces. At the time I did not see it as a field of reaseach — I was trying to test a proposition: that physical form can express systems more richly and intuitively than screen menus.
With programming and electronics skills in place, I co-founded Itch with Andrew Hirniak. We created museum installations, games and products, and I worked with Interval Research in Silicon Valley. Itch joined IDEO around 1999, where I spent three years developing new commercial interfaces.
Teaching became an extension of the same enquiry. Around 1998 Ron Arad invited me to teach Platform 3 in Product Design at the RCA, working with Tony Dunne to push students to rethink products differently — not as finished objects, but as proposals about behaviour, meaning and use. I later moved to Interaction Design with Dominic Robson, where students combined physical objects and code in remarkable ways. I joined Sam Hecht and André Klauser in Platform 12 to re-examine everyday tools, and later Platform 24 with Stuart Wood and Oscar L’Hermitte, blurring the boundaries between services, start-ups and electronic products. Over time, many former students have gone on to shape contemporary design culture, and I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside some of them.
With programming and electronics skills in place, I co-founded Itch with Andrew Hirniak. We created museum installations, games and products, and I worked with Interval Research in Silicon Valley. Itch joined IDEO around 1999, where I spent three years developing new commercial interfaces.
Teaching became an extension of the same enquiry. Around 1998 Ron Arad invited me to teach Platform 3 in Product Design at the RCA, working with Tony Dunne to push students to rethink products differently — not as finished objects, but as proposals about behaviour, meaning and use. I later moved to Interaction Design with Dominic Robson, where students combined physical objects and code in remarkable ways. I joined Sam Hecht and André Klauser in Platform 12 to re-examine everyday tools, and later Platform 24 with Stuart Wood and Oscar L’Hermitte, blurring the boundaries between services, start-ups and electronic products. Over time, many former students have gone on to shape contemporary design culture, and I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside some of them.
From 2004 to 2013 I ran Luckybite with Tom Hulbert, developing client projects alongside self-initiated patents and new products. We explored how industrial design can help communicate new uses — especially when technology makes products behave in unfamiliar ways. During this period we also worked closely with Jack Schulze at BERG, before joining the company in 2013 to develop new connected hardware.
I later worked again with Jack and Timo Arnall on Google’s Soli radar project, and then became Head of Design at SAM Labs, a start-up making coding tools from physical, Bluetooth-enabled hardware blocks.
Later, inspired after meeting the artist Tim Lewis, I developed low-cost mechanical drawing systems with Rob Poll. We spent three intense years learning how to design, manufacture in China, distribute and sell.
Through an accidental meeting in a London gallery with a Senior Director at Apple, I joined his small London design team, where I worked for six years exploring new product ideas.
I am now independent, and excited to set up a studio to explore products and ideas in an open and public way.
I later worked again with Jack and Timo Arnall on Google’s Soli radar project, and then became Head of Design at SAM Labs, a start-up making coding tools from physical, Bluetooth-enabled hardware blocks.
Later, inspired after meeting the artist Tim Lewis, I developed low-cost mechanical drawing systems with Rob Poll. We spent three intense years learning how to design, manufacture in China, distribute and sell.
Through an accidental meeting in a London gallery with a Senior Director at Apple, I joined his small London design team, where I worked for six years exploring new product ideas.
I am now independent, and excited to set up a studio to explore products and ideas in an open and public way.