Ripples holds annual Designer Day
Ripples has held its annual Designer Day, gathering together designers from across the group to share experiences, listen to guest speakers and hear the latest Ripples business updates.
The art’hotel in London’s recently renovated Battersea Power Station area, provided an inspiring backdrop for the day and was the perfect venue to host our group of 25 designers. The day began with a general business update from Managing Director Paul Crow, who also took the opportunity to thank the designers for all of their hard work and efforts from the past year. Paul’s update was then followed by a presentation from Marketing Manager Rachael Rickhuss who showcased the part the designer’s have to play in delivering the brand experience across various customer touch points.
The next talk came from the day’s first guest speaker: renowned journalist, podcast host and interiors editor of Country & Townhouse magazine, Carole Annett. Carole shared advice and anecdotes from some of the interior designers and brand owners she’s interviewed over the years, as well as speaking to the group about the latest interiors trends she’s seeing emerge. Her intriguing insight highlighted the role that fashion and culture have to play in interior design and how recent interiors trends such as ‘Regency-core,’ ‘Cowboy’ and ‘Mob wife aesthetic’ have all derived from popular culture.
It was then time for the annual ‘Design Challenge’; a competition which sees each Ripples designer create a bathroom for a fictitious client with the best overall design winning a coveted prize. The competition helps each designer gain an understanding of how their peers would approach the same project, with the aim of sparking their imaginations and generating fresh approaches to their design work. This year’s brief was to create a bathroom for a luxury hotel.
Following this was the second guest talk of the day which came from Jamie Welch (Sales Director) and Emma Mottram (Brand Manager) of Laufen. They discussed some exciting upcoming product releases as well as showcasing the latest innovations in sustainable manufacturing which the brand is driving forwards.
The day finished with an open forum Q&A session, chaired by Sales Director Nicola Crow, giving the designers the opportunity to quiz their peers on everything from design principles to software.
