Here 2017: Meet the Speakers

Our annual day-long celebration of all things creative returned to the Royal Geographical Society in London on Friday 9 June. We welcomed 750 delegates to the event and curated an international line-up of inspirational creatives from a great number of diverse disciplines who took to the stage to inform and entertain delegates.

Click the names below to find out more about our ten fantastic speakers

Having worked for 50 years for clients around the world George needs little introduction. The graphic designer, illustrator and educator trained at Central St Martins and the RCA. His portfolio includes seminal album designs for Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Led Zeppelin’s debut album.

George is famed for his meticulous, painstaking process, that he produces by hand. His career included a partnership at Nicholas Thirkell Associates (NTA Studios) and collaborations with the likes of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis. George continued to teach until last year at the University of Brighton, and we can’t wait to welcome him to the stage next month.

Graphic designer, illustrator and artist Noma Bar’s innovative and playful work is sought after the world over, and has been commissioned by publications including The New York Times, Wired, The Guardian and more. His work can delight and shock in equal measure and he plays with perceptions and understanding, often creating art that can be read in multiple ways.

Noma’s distinctive style shows a mastery of negative space and minimalist forms – each creating delivered with wit and joy. Expect portraits, sex, conflict, daily life and more from a creative who has made a huge impact on visual culture. Noma joins us as he launches a mammoth five-volume retrospective of his work to date.

Photographer Juno Calypso’s star has continued to rise over the past 12 months. Her work explores ideas of femininity and seduction through self-portraits of her alter-ego Joyce. Juno’s series of images taken in the Honeymoon Hotel in Pennsylvania were a captivating, intimate and unsettling portrait of a fictional stranger.

Since 2012 Juno has picked up a slew of awards including, most recently a Foam Talent award and she was selected as one of It’s Nice That’s inaugural Ones to Watch in 2016. Her work has appeared on the cover of the FT Weekend Magazine, AnOther Magazine, and The British Journal of Photography.

Ryan Gander is a contemporary artist famed for his complex and conceptual works that playfully question the everyday and the uncanny. The British artist was awarded an OBE in 2017 for services to contemporary art and has exhibited in solo shows across the globe. He has received numerous prestigious prizes for his work including the Zurich Art Prize and ABN Amro Art Prize.

Gander’s work reveals his inquisitive mind, making and forcing connections in his art that ask the viewer to make draw conclusions using their imagination. Works produced by Gander have been inspired by Degas, Charles M Schulz, government departments and the play dens he constructs at home with his daughter, each investigating a different way of understanding events we encounter each day, testing and subverting realities we take for granted.

Artist Marguerite Humeau’s work seeks fact through speculation, finding possibilities in the absence of evidence. Whether it’s making extinct beasts roar again or exploring mortality with sculptures that create poisons and antidotes, Marguerite’s work is unflinching and bold, often combining exotic and unimaginable materials.

Last year saw Marguerite exhibit solo shows at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and Nottingham Contemporary in the UK. Her works reside in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Lafayette Corporate Foundation in Paris.

Artist and illustrator James Jarvis’ work “encompasses cartoons, objects, comics, graphic design, printmaking and moving image. His practice concerns drawing, philosophy, alternate realities, minimalism and skateboarding.” London-based James’ career began with a commission for London’s Slam City Skates and, since then, he has worked with the likes of Coca-Cola, Nike and Sony.

For Amos, the brand he ran for ten years, he produced more that 100 individual character toys, and has had solo shows in London, Berlin and Tokyo. James has also produced two moving image projects in collaboration with Richard Kenworthy, 2008’s Onwards and 2012’s Brodown, for MTV.

Christopher Raeburn is a fashion designer who has brought sustainable design to mainstream fashion with garments that combine luxury with integrity. He creates daring designs that rethink traditional utilitarian garments, and is at the forefront of the British fashion scene.

He has worked on collaborations with Barbour, Victorinox fashion and Rapha and developed an app with Nike. He has won countless awards for his menswear collections and his brand is stocked in stores the world over.

Triboro is a Brooklyn-based studio, founded by Texan David Heasty and German Stefanie Weigler, which never fails to impress us with unexpected and challenging work. Whether in publishing, art, music, fashion, or cultural institutions, Triboro continually push emerging and established brands into new territories.

With an incredible client list that includes the likes of ESPN, The New York Times, Nike and Vanity Fair, to name but a few, Triboro’s work has picked up countless awards for its ingenuity. Even the rejected work that Triboro publishes on its website, under the title of ‘leftovers’, remains a rich seam of creativity and inspiration.

Private Parts, Anna Ginsburg’s cheeky animation for Channel 4’s Random Acts series, commissioned by It’s Nice That, caused quite a stir with our readers. The animator and filmmaker will be talked us through the hilarious and very NSFW short, which saw Anna interviewing people about female pleasure then animating them as talking genitals. Anna directed her personal concern towards the lack of acknowledgement of female sexuality. The result is a humorous short that encourages audiences to discuss the subject in an open dialogue, while still slightly giggling and blushing.

A second standout project is Spin The Aub, created with designer and art director Freddy Taylor. The pair used animation to hint at the cheekiness of the aubergine emoji but was also a showcase for Anna’s diverse work. By using a hybrid of illustrational styles, they produced a unique animation composite, encompassing sound and illustration to encourage conversation.

Both projects display the joy of investing time into a personal project, but also the power animation has to convey subjects which we often find difficult to discuss.

Trieste-born Astrid is creative director at Atlas and, prior to this, founded the award winning Astrid Stavro Studio in Barcelona. Her work is typified by idea-driven graphic design that manifests itself with an exquisite typographic sensibility.

Astrid’s portfolio includes books, magazines, brand identities, printed matter, exhibition design, signage, way-finding systems and packaging for an enviable list of clients such as Wallpaper, Eye, Phaidon and Thames&Hudson. She is design director and editor-at-large of Elephant magazine. Earlier this year, Astrid collaborated with It’s Nice That on our Local Characters project, which saw her create a bespoke typeface inspired by the juxtapositions she saw in her hometown.