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PRODUCT DESIGN / Founder - Jackie Piper née Wilkinson OC 1985
What is your profession?
I am a co-founder of British Colour Standard, and we design and make colourful, contemporary home accessories, along with a luxury paint collection, all with an eco or Fair Trade provenance. We are a small company (just 5 of us) based in London, although we have a global reach, selling in the UK, Europe and USA as well as Japan.
What was your journey to that career path?
At school I was always ‘arty’, usually code for ‘not academic’, and of course studied GCSE and A-Level Art at Clarendon. After Clarendon, my family relocated to the USA where I did an Art Foundation at university in Philadelphia. This opened my eyes to a whole range of possible creative career paths, and product design was the one that stuck out and really made sense to me – designing everyday items for practical use rather than following a more fine art pathway.
Following my Bachelors, I did a stint at the Royal College of Art, London, to do a Masters in Industrial Design. This helped me find work in Milan and Japan after graduation – although at the time I was more interested in technology than housewares, which is my happy place.
I have always enjoyed the creative process and making things, even when I was at school – so I suppose I still have the same feeling now, even if it is a part of a more complex business model - designing, making and selling.
I will always love it and I'm not sure I can do anything else!
What do you enjoy the most, and what are the challenges?
There have been many highlights, including some of my designs winning national awards (Gift of the Year…!), but I’m most proud of a collaboration research project I was involved in whilst I was a Product Design Tutor at Central Saint Martin. It was an exhibition I created with two colleagues as part of a ‘Design Against Crime’ initiative which was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York for their permanent collection.
There have also been a fair share of challenges, from managing small suppliers based all over the world to meeting the exacting standards and expectations of today's customers. Brexit (sorry!) certainly did not help our European business and is still an admin struggle, even today – but whatever the challenge, you have to create a way around it, regardless!
