Images&Co is an innovation consultancy, cultural practice and tech developer with a focus on place and identity.
Transforming cities
Our teams make sense of complex narratives in urban policy, design, regeneration and inclusive development. In this area we work with local government, universities, stakeholders and communities to promote civic partnership and co-design, support enterprise and innovation through the startup economy, and work with arts organisations, local communities and developers to reimagine sustainable, inclusive and prosperous cities, towns and communities.
Design Manchester | People + Heritage | Doing Zero | Scale-up Sessions | Key Cities Innovation Network | On the waterfront | Skills for cities, skills for life | Civic Partners in Net Zero | i-PLACE.uk | Creating a Manchester Design Manifesto | South Bank IQ | Better by design
Places not spaces
We use creativity and technology to connect people and places and not separate them from their environment. We are interested in how places speak and relate, and we work with providers, custodians and stakeholders to develop strategic usability of public environments, from legible cities, integrated mobility and wayfinding, to developing incubators and coworking spaces, and rethinking human-centred use of digital technology and data in parks and the public realm.
Traffic Management in Istanbul | Birmingham Children’s Hospital | Legible London | Dublin Bus | The Sharp Project | Science Museum London.
Popular culture
Images&Co is custodian of a significant range of cultural archives and IP spanning the last half century, which underpins our work in delivering cultural programmes and innovation both in rights management and technology. Our experience and practice inform our holistic approach to place and popular culture, which focuses on cross-sector partnerships, inclusive access, regeneration, and community co-production.
Assorted Images Archive | We Are Bury | New Sounds New Styles | Malcolm Garrett X Duran Duran at SEA | Buzzcocks at Design Manchester | How the Bauhaus changed the 1980s | Document Seventeen | Band on the Wall | Culture and Place in Britain | Culture, Development and Place
Technology
Design, usability, data, security and trust are essential to ensuring that digital transformation works for people and communities. We work with our clients and partners to develop innovative technology solutions – commercial, civic and cultural – that are ethical, secure and easy to use. Images&Co is an ICO-registered data controller.
LVMH Beauty Tech | VITAL-IoT Public Sector Tech | NetPark | The World of Elective Intrusion | Manchester Coderdojo | Finsbury Park AR Trail | i-PLACE.uk
Education and skills
We work with schools, colleges and universities, and with industry and government, to promote creative education, skills development, pathways to sustainable jobs, and future approaches to teaching and learning.
Sir Misha Black Awards | The Great Debate | Skills for cities, skills for life | Key Cities Innovation Network
Kasper de Graaf FRSA
CEO
Kasper is a consultant and producer with extensive experience in place innovation.
He has written numerous studies and reports on topics including culture and place, city legibility, skills, civic design, climate action and coastal decline, and played a leading role in delivering major projects, from the world’s largest pedestrian wayfinding scheme in London and traffic management technology in Istanbul to the redesign of border control environments at UK ports and airports.
As a director of Design Manchester, Kasper created a local and global network of partnerships that underpinned the city’s design festival from 2013-2022, producing an annual public debate on design and society, an international conference on liveable cities and a series of innovation symposia on architecture and advanced materials. In 2019-2021, he was programme director of People + Heritage, a National Lottery Heritage Fund-supported engagement project with communities in three North London boroughs. In 2021 he directed Doing Zero, a creative commission for COP26 funded by the British Council, working with communities in Manchester and Nairobi to highlight the impact of food on climate change. He is currently leading an innovation project to develop new licensing models for cultural and community archives to balance the interests of creators with the opportunities created by advances in technology including AI.
Kasper is a member of the AHRC’s assessment panel for funding applications to its Locally Unlocking Culture through Inclusive Access (LUCIA) programme, a role he previously fulfilled for the European Commission assessing applications for Horizon 2020 funding for creative technologies. He has served as a member of the Digital Rights Management sub-group of the UK Broadband Stakeholder Group, a steering group member of the UK Design Action Plan, and a director of VJs.net, a Nesta-created company which developed training and copyright-free archive material for VJs. He serves as policy consultant on parliamentary and government engagement to the 25-member group of Key Cities in England and Wales and is director of the Key Cities Innovation Network of 12 universities working with the 25 cities.
Kasper previously worked as a journalist and editor for the Birmingham Post, Times Higher Education Supplement, The Guardian, the BBC, Smash Hits, New Sounds New Styles and The Business of Film before developing Assorted Images in partnership with Malcolm Garrett in the 1980s and then switching his focus to environmental design and place policy.
He is a member of BAFTA and the Society of Authors, and a fellow of the RSA.
Recent publications and productions include:
Culture, Place and Development
On the waterfront
Social care: views from the front line
Civic Partners in Net Zero
Better by design
Doing Zero – food and climate change
Skills for Cities, Skills for Life
Culture and Place in Britain
Malcolm Garrett MBE RDI
CDO
Malcolm is a graphic designer known for his groundbreaking design and branding in music, the arts, media, digital and immersive experiences and public spaces over more than four decades.
In 1977, while still at art school, he established his design practice under the name Assorted iMaGes, producing record sleeves and posters for friends including seminal punk pop bands Buzzcocks and Magazine. In 1981, a year after moving to London, magazine editor Kasper de Graaf invited him to design New Sounds New Styles and two years later the two went into partnership to develop the Assorted Images studio along with a wider community of artists, writers, designers, stylists and musicians in what was then a derelict Shoreditch in the East End of London.
In music, Malcolm created landmark designs for The Members, The Human League, Duran Duran, Boy George, Simple Minds, Peter Gabriel and many others. Fine artists Denis Masi and Peter Phillips, dancer Michael Clark, filmmakers Peter Greenaway and Paul W S Anderson and broadcaster Jonathan Ross were among his clients, along with organisations such as the ICA, Museum of Modern Art Oxford, Channel 4, the RSC, the LSO, British Ballet Organization, The Sharp Project, Open Futures, NetPark and Stoke Newington Literary Festival.
In 1994 he established AMX, one of the first digital companies in what is now Tech City. While continuing to work with musicians such as Orbital, Oasis, Pulp, Iron Maiden and Spice Girls, AMX delivered innovations for corporate clients such as Apple, EMI, Virgin, Warner Brothers, Barclays, Saatchi & Saatchi, BBC, Sci-Fi Channel, SkyTV and Accenture, exploring the potential of “new media” alongside conventional publishing and media outlets.
In 2003 he became the Creative Director at Immersion Studios in Toronto, creating immersive ‘interactive cinema’ installations in museums and visitor centres around the world. On his return to London he applied the lessons of digital innovation in real-world spatial design, helping to develop the Legible London walking map (with AIG London) and introducing a new network diagram and routing scheme for Dublin Bus. With 2NQ he works with local Councils and community groups to deliver community-led projects, including the 2019 celebrations around the 150th Anniversary of Finsbury Park, one of the original Victorian ‘people’s parks’.
Malcolm is a Founder and Joint Artistic Director of Design Manchester, which promotes the design sector in Greater Manchester and presented an annual design festival from 2013-2022.
In 1998 he was nominated for the Prince Philip Designers Prize for ‘outstanding achievement in design for business and society’, and in 2000, he became the first RSA Royal Designer for Industry nominated for what was then the ‘new media’ category. He served as Master of the Faculty of Royal Designers from 2013 to 2015 and chairs the committee that decides the Sir Misha Black Awards for excellence in design education.
Malcolm was one of the first 10 designers to be inducted into the Design Week ‘Hall of Fame’ in 2015, and in 2017 was nominated as one of Creative Review’s 50 ‘Creative Leaders’. He is a Visiting Professor at UAL, Ambassador for Manchester School of Art, a member of BAFTA and a Fellow of the Institute of Typographic Designers.
In 2020 Malcolm was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to design.