Ross Collins

Ross was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1972. As he grew up he was fond of drawing, the Bionic Man and precariously swinging backwards on chairs. He graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 1994 with a First in Illustration. In the same year he won the MacMillan Children's Book Prize an achievement that opened many doors in the Big Smoke. Ross then spent two years in London cultivating an exotic image of the scribbling Scotsman abroad. Ross returned to Glasgow, where he spends his time writing and illustrating children's books aswell as doing animation character development.

Peter Saville

Peter Saville (born 9 October 1955 in Manchester) is an English art director based in London.

Saville attended St Ambrose College. He studied graphic design at Manchester Polytechnic (later Manchester Metropolitan University) from 1975 to 1978.Peter Saville is famous for the design of record sleeves for Factory Records artists, most notably for Joy Division and New Order.

Influenced by a fellow student, Malcolm Garrett, who had begun designing for the Manchester punk group, the Buzzcocks, and by Herbert Spencer's Pioneers of Modern Typography, Saville was inspired by Jan Tschichold, chief propagandist for the New Typography. According to Saville: "Malcolm had a copy of Herbert Spencer's Pioneers of Modern Typography. The one chapter that he hadn't reinterpreted in his own work was the cool, disciplined "New Typography" of Tschichold and its subtlety appealed to me. I found a paralled in it for the New Wave that was evolving out of Punk."

Saville entered the music scene after meeting Tony Wilson, the journalist and television presenter, whom he approached at a Patti Smith show in 1978. This resulted in Wilson commissioning the first Factory Records poster (FAC 1). Saville became a partner of Factory Records along with Wilson, Rob Gretton and Alan Erasmus.

Saville's album design for Joy Division's last album, Closer, released shortly after Ian Curtis's suicide in May 1980, was controversial in its depiction of Christ's body entombed. However, the design pre-dated Curtis' death, a fact which rock magazine the New Musical Express was able to confirm, since it had been displaying proofs of the artwork on its walls for several months.

Saville's output from this period included reappropriation from art and design. Design critic Alice Twemlow wrote: "...in the 1980s... he would directly and irreverently "lift" an image from one genre—art history for example—and recontextualize it in another. A Fantin-Latour "Roses" painting in combination with a colour-coded alphabet became the seminal album cover for New Order's Power, Corruption and Lies (1983), for example."

In the 2002 film 24 Hour Party People based on Tony Wilson and the history of Factory Records, Saville is portrayed by actor Enzo Cilenti. His reputation for missing deadlines is comically highlighted in the film.

In 1979, Saville moved from Manchester to London and became art director of the Virgin offshoot, DinDisc. He subsequently created a body of work which furthered his refined take on Modernism, working for artists such as Roxy Music, Duran Duran, Wham! and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Saville founded the design agency Peter Saville Associates (still designing primarily for musical artists and record labels) before he was invited to close his office in 1990 to join the partner-owned Pentagram, one of the most respected and very few truly multidisciplinary design consultancies/agencies in the world.

Pentagram

Pentagram is the world's largest independent design consultancy. The firm is owned and run by 19 partners, a group of friends who are all leaders in their individual creative fields. They work in London, New York, San Francisco, Berlin and Austin. Designing everything from architecture, interiors, products, identities, publications, posters, books, exhibitions, websites, and digital installations. Working closely to the clients so as to keep the passion and inspiration strong and improve the final outcome. 

Michael Gondry

French-born Gondry was raised in Versailles, near Paris, and had dreams of becoming a painter or inventor. He attended art school to study graphics in the '80s. There he and friends created a pop-rock band called Oui-Oui. After releasing two albums, the band members went their separate ways in the early '90s. Gondry, who had played drums for the band and directed their music videos, was asked by Björk to direct a video for her song, 'Human Behaviour.' Impressed with his work, Björk hired him to direct five more of her videos. With the world-wide exposure, Gondry suddenly found himself sought out by other artists such as The Rolling Stones, Beck, Daft Punk, Chemical Brothers, Foo Fighters, Lenny Kravitz and Sheryl Crow to direct their music videos. Gondry also entered the world of commercials, working with high-powered companies like Gap, Smirnoff, Air France, Nike, Coca Cola, Adidas and Polaroid. While establishing himself in the music video and commercial industry, Gondry developed a number of new film techniques including morphing and invented the idea of using several cameras to take pictures at the same time around someone. This technique was eventually used in The Matrix (1999). His work led to numerous awards in both fields. In the late '90s, Gondry decided to give feature filmmaking a try. His English-speaking debut film was the comedy Human Nature (2002), starring Tim Robbins, Patricia Arquette and Rhys Ifans. Gondry won numerous awards for his second film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslett, including an Academy Award for Best Screenplay; Best Director from the Online Film Critics Society, the Toronto Film Critics Association and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association; and Best Original Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America. Since then, he's also won awards for his work on the comedy film Tokyo! (2008), a collaboration with directors Leos Carax and Joon-ho Bong.

Kyle Cooper

Kyle Cooper is a director and designer of film title sequences. He holds an MFA in graphic design from the Yale School of Art, where he studied under graphic designer Paul Rand, as well as a BFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In 1996, he co-founded and named creative agency Imaginary Forces. He has directed and produced more than 150 film title and VFX sequences, including Se7en, Spider-Man, and The Mummy. In 2001, he directed a feature film, New Port South.

He moved on to found Prologue Films in 2003, with which he has created title sequences for The Incredible Hulk, Final Destination 5, and The Walking Dead. In 2008, he was a finalist in the National Design Awards. He has earned five Emmy Award nominations and one win for his work on the 81st Annual Academy Awards. He also holds the title of Honorary Royal Designer for Industry from the Royal Society of Arts in London.

Johnny Hannah

Jonny Hannah was born in Dunfermline. He studied illustration at Liverpool Art School and then The Royal College of Art. Since 1998, he has worked consistently as an illustrator in most fields. He has collaborated with the animator Jonathan Hodgson, and in 2000 they completed 'The Man With The Beautiful Eyes', a five minute animation for Channel Four Television which went on to win many awards, including the BAFTA that year. In 2001 he co-published 'The Captain's Alphabet' with Peter Sampson at Merivale Editions, which like most of his fine printed ephemera, quickly sold out. Hot Jazz Special, a book of red-hot rhymes and cool cats, is his first offering for children and published by Walker Books. It was shortlisted for the 2005 Victoria & Albert Museum Illustration Award.

John Maeda

John Maeda is Japanese-American graphic designer, currently the president of the Rhode Island School of Design. Origianlly a software student in Massachusetts, he became intrigued by the work of Paul Rand and Muriel Cooper, particularly Cooper’s MIT Visual language workshop. After completing his master’s degree, he went from there to Japan to attain his PHD in Design.

His early work made use of electronic media in showing expression with computer imagery, combined with traditional artist techniques. In 2001, he received the National Design Award for Communication Design in the United States and Japan's Mainichi Design Prize. Published the Laws of Simplicity in 2006 to help inspire and overcome complexity.