Here 2013: Wayne Hemingway with a dose of innovation to start your day

Wayne Hemingway is a designer in the truest sense of the word, as we discovered when he spoke about his career in his insightful and uplifting talk at Here 2013. Intuitive and discerning, the Lancashire-born designer has built a career upon what he believes to be the central pillar to his craft; finding out about the problems afflicting society, and doing everything necessary to solve them.

At Here regaled us with tales of his career, from arriving in London with his soon to be wife, Geraldine, without any qualifications or money, to rescuing 6,000 pairs of broken Dr Martens boots from landfill in order to re-solder them and sell them on Camden market in the early 1980s, to how together they recruited their whole families to help them manufacture their very first order for Macy’s as Red or Dead.

His insistence upon bettering people’s lives is based on having an idea, having the belief to learn the necessary skills to execute that idea, and then having the balls to go ahead and do just that in spite of any odds stacked up against you. If that doesn’t give you goosebumps, nothing will.

You can watch this and videos of the other Here 2013 talks over on our audio-visual channel First Broadcast.