Podium Furnish

In the spirit of London’s summer of sport, we’ve decided to to celebrate a few British winners from our Exclusive Design range for M&S. If you are in Shad Thames, check out our office windows, where you’ll find the champions on their podium.

Design by Conran to shake up the American homewares market

We’re delighted to be working with jcpenney to bring a new range of homewares to America.

Conran likes….Richard Weston

Today’s favourite thing spied in the Conran & Company office are these amazing prints by – of all things – a geological professor, Prof. Richard Weston.

Our textile designer Lale Guralp is particularly taken with them..

It’s such a simple concept – scanning a natural object – but the beauty and patterns revealed are astonishing…a whole world of beauty!

As seen on the BBCs ‘Best of British’ – right up our street.

Read all about him and his work here

Conran: All the fun of the press show…

The very exciting Conran/M&S project is one step nearer to launch!

In case you missed it, Conran and Company are working with the development teams at M&S to design their entire ‘Contemporary’ homewares offer from Autumn onwards.

The press lunch – a very intimate affair with just 20 journalists and editors from the top design and interiors magazines – took place last week and garnered a great response.

We showed our initial product range, a capsule collection of 70 products (launch in-store Sept 2011) which includes beautiful hand-made upholstery, statement ceramics and an eclectic mix of textiles and accessories – as well as some very useful and beautiful cabinet pieces. 

All hands on deck!: a waiter changes a plug...

The private members room at Lutyens, Terence’s restaurant on the former newspaper ghetto Fleet Street seemed a very apt location

Conran: Conran & Company are on the look out for an assistant….!

Conran & Company, the home of CONRAN brand licensing, is in need of some assistance!

We have been working hard, growing, making new friends and spreading ourselves around in all manner of multitasking ways and now we find ourselves one admin assistant short of a highly creative team.

If you are bright, diligent and hard-working and enjoy a fast-paced environment then click here to find out more about this exciting opportunity…

Click here to read all the posts that relate to Conran & Company and check out our website here….     

Conran: Milan Furniture Fair Trend Report

As promised, here’s an overview of trends shown in Milan by Conran & Company’s Alice Walsh.

Milan, as always, was great fun, but the economic situation (and maybe the volcano’s 2010 disruption) was definitely evident in the lack of new products being launched this year.Instead we saw products re-issued in new colours and materials.

Colour was generally toned down and more grown up. However there were some brights thrown into the mix. These included lead reds, vapor yellows and sulphate blues. Combinations of these 3 colours were visible in a lot of stands and exhibitions.

Colour combinations

There was a definite sense of ‘casual living’ throughout the fair. This sense of realism was shown through soft plump upholstery, coupled with fat piping, hospital corners and blanket stitching to illustrate construction and emphasise comfort.

Casual living at Vitra

Another noticeable trend was that tables were presented in clusters rather than formal nests.Honesty in material and form was a nice extension from the last few years.

Wirework

Webbing

Dowels

And off the wall lighting kept appearing too, whether it was a re-issue in a new colour or a new design.

Lighting

Conran: Meeting up in style…

What better place to enjoy a cool glass of wine on one of the warmest, sunniest evenings of the year than the rooftop terrace of Terence Conran’s apartment.

And while you’re there why not have a nose around our building and find out a bit more about Conran?

That’s exactly what tempted 40 of the UK’s most eminent design bloggers to join us last night for the first of our blogger’s meet-up events, run in conjunction with our friends over at mydeco.com, the one-stop shop for all your design needs.

We thought it would also be a great opportunity for people to chat to our team and get the lowdown on each part of Conran, whilst having a little look around our studios.

While the team from The Conran Shop chatted to people about some of their hot new products for Spring Summer 2011, down in Studio Conran Bryony Akehurst and Katy Clarke talked the guests through the branding project they did for the healthy cake people Petit Pois and Product Designer Jared Mankelow demonstrated the design process behind our mobile phone which launched in Japan last year, sparking a very interesting discussion on the dying art of hand sketching as a useful exploratory phase at the beginning of the design process.

Interior Designer Jacqui Senior and Architect Nico Santarelli showed bloggers around our Architecture & Interiors floor, Conran & Partners talking about the breadth of interior design we have done all over the world and the massive new redevelopment project Conran & Partners have just completed in Tokyo (more next week…).

All very interesting stuff and lots of questions asked!

In Conran & Company project manager Holly-Anne Rolfe and textile designer Lâle Güralp gave the bloggers a quick tour around their office, showcasing some of the Conran branded product they help develop including brand new bedlinen designs from Bed by Conran and Conran Fine Bedlinen which are just about to hit the shops – books, colour and inspiration galore.

Plus much interest in the beautiful collection of prints of paintbrush collections which Terence bought as a book and framed years ago which have adorned the walls of the office since it was Terence’s a few years ago (he’s now just across the hallway).

There’s already been a few reports posted up there in the big, bold, blogosphere…

there’s one here at youmightlikethis.com – (thanks!)

Watch this space – we hope to have many more meet-ups in the future….enjoy the sun!

Update: LOADS MORE NEWS HERE!

Conran: *Stop Press* Exciting new collaboration with M&S

You might already have heard the very exciting announcement this morning about our new collaboration with M&S. Here’s Terence and M&S CEO Marc Bolland – one of  the ‘official’ shots.

The new Conran Exclusive Design Only at M&S collection will form the basis of the M&S Contemporary homewares offer and will include a wide range of home products incorporating furniture, bedding, lighting and kitchenware.

It’s been all steam ahead behind the scenes for Terence and the team from Conran & Company making sure we hit some very tight deadlines for launching our first ‘Preview Collection’ into 25 M&S stores and online this Autumn.

An early development meeting in the Conran & Company studio

Designed by Conran in collaboration with M&S product developers, the collection will retain the quality and value customers expect from M&S, coupled with our unique Conran design signature.

There will be much more about this here and on our websites in the next few weeks and months so keep coming back for news and developments.

...but what's inside the file?!

..and make sure you clear some space at home in time for September 2011 – when the first wave of Conran products hit the shelves with more lines to follow from Spring 2012 onwards…

There’s some fabulous stuff coming through!

Conran: Jobs – Product and Domestic Furniture designer sought

Conran and Company – our branded projects department – are looking for a highly creative candidate with a broad range of design experience across many categories – including homewares, furniture and lighting.

We are looking for an individual who is passionate about contemporary design, can deliver sketch through to 3D models at a fast pace and understands the parameters of commercial product design for brand partners, retailers and the high street.

Think that’s you?

Click here to read the full job spec and details of how to apply...

Conran: Sneak Peak: New CONRAN AUDIO iPod dock.

The team here from Conran & Company are constantly working on developing new CONRAN branded products from furniture to bedlinen, towels to tablecloths, coffee pots to eyewear.

There are quite a few new exciting products in the pipeline and here’s one of the latest – the first product in the CONRAN AUDIO range – an iPod dock, due in store in February 2011.

If you are a technie then brace yourself: it’s got high quality audio engineered by Q Acoustics and features two 75mm bass/mid drivers plus a pair of 30mm tweeters and can deliver a total of 30 watts of power. Phew.

So it’s basically a very good sound system but because it’s Conran and been designed by Studio Conran it’s been deliberately conceived to be different from all other iPod docks – the focus is on incredibly stylish and yet understated design, offering a elegant alternative for a relaxed living space.

It can play audio wirelessly via Bluetooth so, as Terence puts it: “you can select songs from the comfort of an armchair, or, if it’s your thing whilst dancing around the room…”

The dock assembly rotates, so video on iPhones and iPod Touches can be watched in landscape mode while listening to the Speaker Dock. It also has six preset equaliser settings which each suit different types of music and comes with its own remote control that cleverly fits into a magnetic recess in the side of the dock meaning you should never lose the remote down the side of the aforementionned armchair ever again…

Read more about it

The CONRAN AUDIO I-dock is compatible with all iPods and will be available in the shops and online from February 2011…