Hugh Williamson

Hugh Williamson graduated from Coventry (Lanchester) Polytechnic in 1986 with a BA (Hons) in Industrial Design (Transportation). He worked in industry firstly as a toy designer, working in a small product consultancy for clients such as Boots, Texas Instruments and Kiddicraft.

In 1998 he joined Styling International, a transport design consultancy, part of the Hawtal Whiting engineering group. This position involved everything from truck and car design, through military vehicles, to toys, domestic and retail interiors. Clients included Honda, Nissan, Daewoo and Bentley.

Hugh was the Design Manager for the “Microflat” interior; a single person modular building concept which received much press coverage and critical acclaim, and was shortlisted for the Minerva by the CSD (Chartered Society of Designers) He was responsible for a 20 strong team of designers and modellers.

This experience lead him to become a team member of a 3 year long European funded research project whose aim was to define a set of standards, for the design and build of modular accommodation structures.

Hugh has held a number of teaching posts, teaching on the Transport, Industrial Product Design and Automotive Design Engineering courses at Coventry University. He has also lectured at Cranfield Institute of Technology, Loughborough and Warwick Universities.

In 1997 he moved to Staffordshire University to teach Product Design, and in 1999 became the Course Leader for that course. He has helped maintain and develop new links with industry, and sees this as a vital and enriching part of the course. In 2006 he developed the BA Transport Design course. He is very interested in the relationship of the computer to the design process and continues to get to grips with both 2D &3D modelling software.