Kirsty Minns

Gave us a lecture about her career since graduating from the course.

When it was a four year course, Kirsty worked for Fashion magazines; Pop and Dazes & Confused. Then she worked for The Jam.

Her final project was designed against perfection. Deviation from the norm in objects. Normality in humans and objects.

After graduation she went to New York, where she worked for Boym partners (http://www.boym.com/) . It is a varied office where she worked on their cutlery project involving mismatching cutlery.

Then returned and worked for London Tag.

Kirsty applied for a position as studio assistant at Established and sons, but she ended up being offered a temporary position instead. She worked on graphics for a while which involved mucking in on everything. The company was quite small at the time. As it has grown she has become a stronger part of the team. She works in product development. It is the dream job. She works with all the designers the company collaborate with to make the product viable. From structure, components, form, prototyping, developing materials. She works in solid works often. She had little experience of it, but bigged it up a bit. Currently she has to develop ten different projects at once.


Use skills and experience that shes acquired to start on own projects. Now collaborating with James Cuddy to work on a project.

Kirsty's advice:
Be competitive, market yourself, design industry is very small so network, network, network!! Be prepared to work your way up. Based on relationships with people. Be active, be aware of what is happening in society. Attention to detail, people always notice the worst instead of the good. Make self useful and muck in. However long you stay acquire lots and lots of experience.

In production development you learn so much, by working with designers and manufacturers. You will have a lot to offer other companies. Materials and different designers. It is an unusual and exceptional experience.

Goldsmiths sets you up to turn your hand to challenges and risks.

Keep freelancing going. Build up relationships with manufacturers.

I would like to visit the Duke Street St James studio holding the exhibition about the design art debate.

Future systems design agency