Introduction
Ben Terrett RDI (born 1975) is a British designer. He was the first Royal Designer for Industry elected for Service Design and has won the Design Museum's Design of the Year, a D&AD "Black Pencil" and is in the Design Week Hall of Fame. Terrett specialises in large digital projects and is most well known for his work designing the GOV.UK website.
Terrett co-authored the UK Government Design Principles which Tim O'Reilly called "the most significant since Apple’s". Terrett has said "Every designer should work in the public sector."As of February 2019 he is the CEO of Public Digital and a Governor at University of the Arts London
Early life
Terrett was born in Wiltshire in 1975. He studied Graphic Design and Illustration at De Montfort University. In 1997 he won the Royal Society of Arts Student Design Awards prize for Interactive Graphics.
Career
Early career
In 2001 he set up The Design Conspiracy, a graphic design agency. The agency created the website What Brand Are You? which gained notoriety when the spoof names were registered for real. In 2008 he co-founded Newspaper Club with Russell Davies and Tom Taylor. From 2008 to 2011 Terrett worked at the London office of Wieden+Kennedy as the Design Director and the Creative Director on the Guardian and Nike Grid accounts.
Government Digital Service
From 2011 to 2015 Terrett was Director of Design in the Government Digital Service in the Cabinet Office. He led a team of multi-disciplinary designers who designed GOV.UK. In 2013 GOV.UK was the first digital project to win the Design Museum's Design of the Year award. GOV.UK also won a D&AD "Black Pencil" award. The Government Digital Service has been used as case study at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
On leaving the Government Digital Service, Terrett said “Every designer should work in the public sector.” “In an industry so often obsessed with novelty and persuasion, government is a chance to do real design work. If the government started a fast stream programme for design grads it would start to change the industry and make services better at the same time.”
Terrett has co-authored a book about his time in government: Digital Transformation at Scale: Why the Strategy Is Delivery.
Co-operative Group and beyond
In 2015 he left GDS and joined the Co-operative Group as Group Design Director. At the Co-op Terrett led the rebrand of the Group, returning to the iconic logo of 1968. In 2018 he left the Group to set up a consultancy company, Public Digital, where he is CEO.
His work has been exhibited in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
Other roles
Terrett is a Governor at University of the Arts London, a Trustee of D&AD, a member of the High Speed 2 Design Panel and an advisor to the London Design Festival.
Honours and awards
Winner, Graphics Category Design Museum Design of the Year for Newspaper Club, 2010
Winner Overall, Design Museum Design of the Year for GOV.UK, 2013
Winner, D&AD Black Pencil for GOV.UK, 2013
Design Week Hall of Fame, 2017
Royal Designer for Industry for Service Design, 2018