Tim Perry - Founder of TP Consulting & Former Managing Partner of Webb deVlam

My Life In Design Podcast

Tim Perry traces his career from a Coventry-trained industrial designer to a strategic consultant bridging the gap between creative execution and business development. He details his tenure at Nokia

Key takeaways

• Tim Perry studied transportation design at Coventry but pivoted early toward strategy after realizing the program was heavily skewed toward automotive styling.
• Nokia sold over one million handsets daily and held nearly 50% global market share before Tim joined, managing a portfolio of 60-80 distinct models.

Main topics

• Industrial design education and early career pivots
• Nokia's market dominance and smartphone disruption

Notable quotes

We mistook that familiarity for ease of use.

Conclusion

The episode offers a pragmatic roadmap for creatives seeking leadership roles, emphasizing that mastering

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:08) Welcome to My Life in Design, brought to you by the DBA and design-focused PR agency Red Setter. I'm Claire Blythe, co-founder of Red Setter. In this series, I'll be speaking to more people who are shaping the world of design, finding out how they discovered that design was a thing you could base a career around, and how they got to where they are today. Speaker 2 (0:32) This week, I'm here with Tim Perry, a Coventry-trained industrial designer who led the agency Web de Vlam to a sale in 2016. Previous to this, he worked on design strategy at the peak of Nokia's success. He's judged at D &AD and Creative Pool. He's now a consultant working with people leading an independent design agency, helping them on their growth. He's also got a series of training courses for the business side of design. Tim, Speaker 1 (0:58) welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. Speaker 2 (1:01) So can we start right at the beginning of, so from an industrial designer to where you are now, as a child, did you realise that design was a career that was an option for you? Did you know it was a thing? Speaker 1 (1:12) Not at first. My mum and dad were both teachers and they both taught creative subjects. So I suppose I had it in my blood. My mum made a lot of my sister's clothing. My dad was a woodwork teacher and made all of our furniture and he had a shop at home. Yeah, I'm a classic sort of good life child. We grew our own vegetables and had chickens. Did you? Fantastic. Where was this? This was in the Midlands in Leicestershire. Speaker 2 (1:36) Okay. Speaker 1 (1:37) Yeah, I moved down to the south when I was about 10. And yes, so my dad had a workshop at home and I would find myself in there tinkering and making things out of wood and normally bows and arrows and things like that as a small boy. But I didn't realise that design was a thing for a while. So I thought I would be an engineer. I'm one of those people. I've discovered there's quite a lot of us around who studied maths, physics and design at A-level. Yes. And intended to be an engineer. But the thing that changed was my dad had studied at the RCA to get a master's. Oh, wow, okay. To becoming a design lecturer. So Speaker 2 (2:16) they realised that you can make a career out of this. You had that sort of... Speaker 1 (2:19) Well, I only realised it when he took me to their master's degree show one year. I Speaker 2 (2:23) see. Speaker 1 (2:24) So... There I was studying maths, physics and design thinking I'd be an engineer. Speaker 2 (2:29) And Speaker 1 (2:29) my eyes were really opened when I went to the RCA degree show and saw all of this wonderful work. But what really swayed me was when I went to the room with the automotive design work in it. Speaker 2 (2:42) Oh, I did that this year. It was great. Speaker 1 (2:44) Yeah, I'd always loved cars, motorbikes, drawing. And as soon as I saw their renderings, I was sold. That was what I wanted to do. How Speaker 2 (2:52) old were you? Speaker 1 (2:53) I was studying my A-levels, so I would have been 16, 17 at that point. So I rather naively applied to Coventry. It was the only application I made. I hadn't realised it was the only place in Europe at the time, I think, that you could study transportation design at an undergraduate level. Was it? Speaker 2 (3:12) Wow, okay. Speaker 1 (3:13) And, yeah, so I turned up, you know, with my enormous great A2 portfolio case, as we had in those days. found myself sitting in a waiting room waiting to be interviewed with people who've been who tried two three years in a row to try and get in and had been sent away unsuccessfully oh wow and I guess you know my portfolio did me proud and I was lucky enough to get in at the first time of asking that I think they said Speaker 2 (3:40) yeah why do you think that was what's what stood out Speaker 1 (3:42) I think it was just my portfolio of drawing I just had drawn drawn drawn when I was a kid I I don't remember anything about my interview now, so I couldn't tell you what I said. But yeah, I was lucky enough to be accepted. They said, just go away and pass two of your A-levels, which was probably the worst thing in the world that anyone could do to a 17-year-old Speaker 2 (4:01) at Speaker 1 (4:01) that time. So I sort of cruised through the rest of my sixth form and passed two A-levels and yeah, started at Coventry. Speaker 2 (4:10) Wow. So with the intention of being a car designer or something? I guess Speaker 1 (4:14) so. I quite quickly realised that wasn't going to be the path that I would take. So I was surrounded by guys who drew cars all day, every day. And it was mainly males as well, when I say guys. Speaker 2 (4:27) It still was this year, I went to the RCA to show this year. Yeah, I was quite surprised. I thought it would have changed by now, but it still seems overwhelmingly male. I Speaker 1 (4:36) think we were a cohort of 45 and there were two women. That was it. Speaker 2 (4:40) Yeah, I think it's a similar ratio now. Really? Gosh. Speaker 1 (4:44) I'm Speaker 2 (4:44) quite surprised by that. Speaker 1 (4:45) Yeah, so they were absolutely living and breathing it. And I quite quickly realised that the course was maybe not intentionally so, but it was biased towards the styling end of design. And I found myself much more interested in the front end of design, the sort of strategy, the problem solving end of design. So I think I completed my degree there in a slightly different way to most others and set myself quite different projects to most others. But that was the beginning and end of my career as a car designer. What Speaker 2 (5:20) was next? What did you do after that? Speaker 1 (5:23) So I graduated in the early 90s or mid 90s. So I'm kind of dating myself there, aging myself. So there was a recession at the time. So it was a particularly... It's always hard to get your foot on the first rung of the ladder in design, but it was particularly difficult then. I went home from Coventry after graduating and I was lucky enough to land a job as a visiting lecturer at the local college. Speaker 2 (5:49) Oh, wow. Okay. Speaker 1 (5:50) And yeah, having just graduated myself, and I think actually that was part of the appeal to Speaker 2 (5:56) the Speaker 1 (5:57) people who employed me because I could kind of relate to their students a little bit more. Yeah, absolutely. You know, closer to... their point in the journey and so I found myself teaching I was teaching perspective drawing which Speaker 2 (6:11) was Speaker 1 (6:11) fascinating and also giving people advice on how to go about their final year and what kind of project to select and how to yeah how to navigate that very challenging final year at uni yeah Speaker 2 (6:23) and Speaker 1 (6:24) while I was doing that I was just applying to every single job I could possibly find so Speaker 2 (6:28) you knew it was a stopgap you weren't thinking this is yeah it Speaker 1 (6:31) was just a temporary part-time thing so I was pretty convinced that I wasn't going to follow my father's footsteps into education. So yeah, I was applying for lots and lots of jobs and eventually one stuck. So I got a job in East London working for a point of sale manufacturer. Speaker 2 (6:48) Okay, yeah. And Speaker 1 (6:49) it really was one of those things, just take whatever you can, you know, get your foot in the door, get your foot on the rung of the ladder. And they were actually a factory mainly. They were a manufacturer of point of sale goods. And the sorts of things that they made were, if you go into a department store now and you see all of the racks and racks of lipsticks and eyeshadows and Speaker 2 (7:12) so on, Speaker 1 (7:13) cosmetics, could be cosmetic counters. They made a lot of those sorts of things. Fixtures in boots. Yes. Those sorts of things. Speaker 1 (7:22) And because they were a factory, a manufacturer, that was where they made their money. So the design team, we were up on the floor above the factory. We were an overhead. So they effectively gave the design away for free as Speaker 2 (7:36) part of their Speaker 1 (7:37) contracts, Speaker 2 (7:38) manufacturing Speaker 1 (7:39) contracts. But it was a great experience. It was really where I first discovered brands. Of course, yeah. Previously at Coventry, you know, we'd been concerned maybe by the word mark. you know a vehicle mark but hadn't really looked at brands certainly not consumer brands that's Speaker 2 (7:57) interesting isn't it that you could be at university studying that kind of design but you wouldn't think of Mercedes as a brand and how they do Speaker 1 (8:05) you know what I think that changed when the mini launched the new mini launched and all yes okay the the new VW Beetle yeah and the Fiat 500 and then all of a sudden I think brand became much more prominent yes Speaker 2 (8:18) in the Speaker 1 (8:19) car Speaker 2 (8:19) because Speaker 1 (8:19) the Speaker 2 (8:19) design has to be part of that it's not yeah yeah Speaker 1 (8:22) but i again i'm dating myself i was studying before that that time so it was it didn't feature in the course at least as i remember it so it was fascinating getting exposed to that world again i'm dating myself we bought the first mac into the studio so prior to that we were drawing boards drawing things by hand yeah making models out of foam core and cardboard and printing things out yeah sticking them to them so I taught myself how to use a Mac and back at that time Mac skills so being able to use Photoshop and Illustrator were in quite high demand so I was able to leave that job and go freelancing around London right Speaker 2 (9:00) okay which Speaker 1 (9:02) again was a fascinating and super yeah super interesting thing to do early in my career because I got exposure to all kinds of different Speaker 2 (9:10) companies What sort of places did you work? Was it agency side or brand? Speaker 1 (9:13) Well, all sorts. So it was graphic designers. It was advertising companies as well, interestingly. Yeah, all kinds of different companies that needed people with Mac skills doing artwork and the like. So, yeah, really, really fascinating. And it was then that I kind of stumbled across, you know, having learned about brands, I then stumbled across packaging design and 3D packaging design, structural packaging design. and thought, wow, you know, this world of brand that I've just discovered, this is a fabulous way to sort of then... bring to bear my 3d design skills in the world of branding yeah Speaker 2 (9:50) and Speaker 1 (9:50) big companies big brand owners at the time i think we're all realizing that as well as communicating their brand's values through the label on the packaging yeah also do the same through the packaging itself yeah Speaker 2 (10:05) through Speaker 1 (10:06) the bottle or the box or so on and that both in store and also at home once somebody then took a product home and interacted with it and used it yeah Speaker 2 (10:15) so Speaker 1 (10:16) yeah it was a there was a bit of a wave there i guess that i and the