Brits Who Design: Showcasing the work, diversity and talent of brilliant British designers
Recently I shared a very cool site that I found while searching for Spanish designers here in Barcelona; Spaniards Who Design. You may have already stumbled upon similar sites that aggregate design talent by shared common attributes, for example:
- Spaniards Who Design
- Brazilians Who Design
- Women Who Design
- Women Who Draw
- 28 Black Designers
- Latinx Who Design
- Queer Design Club
- Filipinos Who Design
- People Of Craft
- Indians Who Design
- Asian & Pacific Islanders Who Design
The beauty of these sites is that they can be used as a repository that provides more visibility to the work and capabilities of not just well known designers, but also those who are not necessarily top of mind when it comes to finding design talent.
With the current employment crisis caused by the Coronavirus pandemic, we’ve already seen an extraordinary number of jobs being lost, both in the UK and worldwide. This is particularly true for the creative industry. With that in mind, now felt like an appropriate time to bring further attention to these fantastic resources. We have a long history of amazing British design talent, so it felt only right to create Brits Who Design.
Brits Who Design is a place to showcase the work of talented British designers to the world. The goal of the project is to inspire new designers to expand their references, experienced designers to diversify their network, and companies to find hidden talent to join their teams.
If you know a designer whose work is unique, their talent underestimated and their profile is worth sharing with the world, please fill out this form to nominate them to be featured on the platform.
As with many of the other aggregators, we share the following principles:
- We are prioritising designers who have shared their work or capabilities online (on a portfolio, Instagram, Behance, etc.).
- We decided not to collect or display the designer’s photo; we wanted our platform to be less about what someone looks like and more about how they’re creating work that’s unique and with high standards.
- We decided to strive for gender balance on Brits Who Design. If you recommended a designer and it’s taking too long to appear on the website, try nominating someone who identifies as a woman or non-binary for example.
Unlike some other aggregators, we have decided to keep the list of expertise short and simple: Leadership, Brand, UX/Product, Typography, Graphic, Content, Interior, Industrial, Service, Research. There was a lot of discussion of how detailed and granular we should go. We decided to keep it as simple as possible with the hope that peoples links and portfolios will help tell the full story.
Brits Who Design was created by Adam Walker and Ryan Hussey, but the inspiration and materials came from Brazilians Who Design who published their code as open source. Thanks also to Ali for his help with the code.
We hope you enjoy the site and please, let’s start sharing some more great profiles of British designers who deserve some further recognition.
