Design Ventura Judging Panel 2018

This year’s pitching event is going to take place on Monday 10 December. We will welcome the top 10 shortlisted schools to the Design Museum for a chance to pitch their design ideas in front of a panel of industry experts. Here are this year’s panel:

Christoph Woermann

Christoph is Managing Director, Global Head of Marketing, Global Transaction Banking at Deutsche Bank. Christoph has a passion for garden design and is an ardent supporter of the Design Ventura project and a seasoned member of the judging panel.

Duncan Sanders

Duncan is Head of Trading at the Design Museum, with retail, catering and publishing all within his portfolio. Having worked in commercial roles at multitude of leading cultural organisations – including Museum of London, British Library and Southbank Centre – Duncan has a wealth of experience in product and brand development.

Donna Wilson

Donna is a Scottish textile designer with her own brand of cushions, creatures, sweaters, scarves and ceramics. She has been happily designing and making colourful creatures and odd objects for people and their homes since 2003. She is the also the Design Ventura 2018 brief setter.

Heather Corcoran

Heather is Outreach Lead at the creative funding platform Kickstarter. Based in London, she works closely with artists, innovators, creators, and makers across Europe who use Kickstarter to bring new projects to life. Before that, she was the Executive Director of the digital art nonprofit Rhizome, and has held curatorial positions at arts organisations like FACT, the Barbican Centre, and Space. 

Sebastian Conran

Sebastian wanted to be an inventor whilst at school and got A levels in Maths Physics and Chemistry; then he studied Industrial Design Engineering at Central St. Martins, where he gave the Sex Pistols their first booking and designed record sleeves and posters for The Clash. After this he worked at corporate identity consultancy Wolff Olins followed by leading hard-goods development at Mothercare, after which he founded Sebastian Conran Associates design studio in 1986, which he continues to lead.

Sebastian is Visiting Professor of Design & Innovation at Bristol Robotics Lab, Designer in Residence at University of Sheffield engineering faculty, taught furniture design at the Royal College of Art, lectures frequently and advises government on design.