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![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.polymathperspective.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/DSCN0206-1024x768.jpg\")
Rick in a rare two-seater Spitfire, owned by Carolyn Grace. There are only two working two-seaters in the world.<\/p><\/div>\n
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\u201cCulturally, as a nation, we are absolutely devoid of any understanding of manufacturing,” reflects Rick Dickinson regretfully. \u201cYet absolutely every single artifact around you, whether you\u2019re sitting at home, in an office, or walking down the street, had been designed by somebody. Everything has been considered for manufacture by a designer, whether it\u2019s the little plug that goes in the bottom of your phone, the cable that attaches to it or the knob on your door.”<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you are in another European country, you can be in a little shop in a grotty part of town and get talking to the guy behind the counter and as soon as he hears the word designer he knows exactly what you do and has a pretty good grasp of manufacturing, materials and aesthetics. Obviously the people in industry know it, but maybe there are fewer and fewer people in industry.
\n\u201cThere is such a huge and increasing divide between two fundamental sections of society: those that do it and make it happen and those that buy it. I should say that 99 percent of the people who use the iPod, or whatever fashionable high street, high-volume product it is, have no notion whatsoever of the monumental risk, foresight and investment that has gone into getting that product into their mitts.”<\/p>\n
Rick is passionate about his job. At times he describes it as being a nightmare and impossible, but even when he does, it is with a certain kind of fondness. One gets the impression that if it wasn\u2019t a monumental challenge, he\u2019d be doing another job that was.<\/p>\n
His name will be forever associated with Sinclair, having worked on the ZX81, ZX Spectrum, Sinclair QL and later the Cambridge Z88 laptop, but for the last 25 years Rick has run his own industrial design business called Dickinson Associates, based in Cambridge. The company specialize in the design of telecommunication devices and medical equipment and have a list of awards too long to list here.<\/p>\n
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Industrial Roots<\/strong><\/p>\n Reflecting on how it all started, Rick believes that his interest in design grew from a childhood fascination with vehicles, buildings, bridges and model making. \u201cI remember going around the factory and seeing hundreds of drawing boards in the offices. My father was always drawing and sketching as well as making things, so the garage was full of aircraft bits going all the way back to Lancaster bomber parts.”<\/p>\n \u201cUnsurprisingly all his friends were that way inclined as well, so wherever I went there were massive machines and people making incredible things, so I was very heavily influenced. \u201cI was working with a wide range of materials. Plastics were coming in and because dad was in the aircraft industry I saw materials that were quite interesting, like polypropylene and nylon, for example. As a child, you are very limited in your access to tools and knowledge of what you can do so everything was trial and error. It was any tool I could get hold of, short of oxycethelene, so it was saws, hammers and chisels. You soon discover that you can\u2019t saw a piece of brass with a wood saw and you start to develop a feeling for that sort of thing.”<\/p>\n \u201cAs a child I\u2019d spend a lot of time in Germany, Holland and Switzerland, particularly Christmases and birthdays, because my mother is half Dutch and half German and we\u2019d visit her family, particularly in Germany. Lego had just been launched in Denmark, and I think Germany was probably the first country outside of Denmark where Lego was marketed, years before it came to the UK.”<\/p>\n \u201cA boy who lived upstairs from my grandparents used to bring down a sack full of Lego bricks and empty it on the kitchen floor for us to play with, and I was absolutely hooked. Every birthday and Christmas after that people bought me boxes of Lego and I\u2019d build everything from suspension bridges to spaceships. The traditional Lego bricks were just the square and rectangular format, so you had to be really inventive and imaginative to make something curved with them. And also, a little bit later on, Gerry Anderson came out with Thunderbirds which was, for me, the most amazing thing I had ever seen in my life! It was a designer\u2019s dream. So I\u2019d say this is all part of making things and trying to be creative.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rick: “I found this scribble in a book given to the family, called \u2018Railways the World over\u2019. It was not the done thing to scribble in books and I guess I could barely hold a crayon when I did this. I think the locomotive is pulling a rocket, and I can see there is a rocket launch tower, and I liked tunnels.”<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n When I Grow Up<\/strong><\/p>\n As a child, Rick decided he wanted to one day be a train driver and then a lorry driver before considering a career as an artist and a train driver once again. Eventually, though, while still at school, he settled upon the idea of civil engineering, which partially satisfied his interest in structures.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember spending hours looking at photographs of bridges, buildings and dams in the Encyclopaedia Britannica<\/em>, but when I got into sixth form I started to realized that it probably involved too much maths, which I didn\u2019t have a particular flair for. But even today I love watching new motorways and bridges being built. I could stand there and watch forever. If there is another job I would have liked to have done it would have been civil engineering.”<\/p>\n Aware that civil engineering was perhaps more about making calculations than creative design, Rick decided to pursue a career in architecture, which appealed to his interest in the aesthetic. He made sure that his A-level subjects were appropriate and collected the prospectuses for three colleges running suitable courses. And that is what he might well have ended up doing, if it hadn\u2019t been for a chance meeting one day.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was my last day in the sixth form,” remembers Rick, \u201cand I just happened to be walking through the art room when my teacher asked me what I was going to do. I told him it was architecture and he, said \u2018I\u2019m surprised. I thought you\u2019d be doing industrial design.”<\/p>\n I said “What\u2019s that?”<\/p>\n \u201cHe said \u2018Well, it\u2019s just up your street. It\u2019s designing everything from forks and knives to forklift trucks. You make drawings, models, prototypes and then it all goes into production. It involves everything you are good at and like.”<\/p>\n And by an amazing coincidence he had a yellow-looking prospectus from what was then Leeds Polytechnic. He flicked through it and that was it \u2013 that was the turning point. \u201cThey said they\u2019d give me a place but by then, of course, my qualifications weren\u2019t ideally suited, so I had the option of doing another year of A-levels and taking different subjects, or a year\u2019s arts foundation course, which is what I chose because I\u2019d really had enough of school.”<\/p>\n \u201cNewcastle Polytechnic also said they liked people to go to Carlisle for their foundation but when I got in contact with Carlisle I discovered that I wouldn\u2019t be awarded a grant and would have to pay for it myself. Because dad worked for Blackburn\u2019s aircraft company, we lived in a village in East Yorkshire, so I had a Local Education Authority grant that allowed me to do the foundation course at either Hull or Grimsby technical college, and I chose the latter. I thought it was time I left home so took the paddle steamer across the river Humber, went to the tech and lived in Cleethorpes by the sea, which was absolutely brilliant.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThis was me at about age 15. I built all of these boats from scratch. The Russian destroyer is balsa wood. I copied it from photos. The boat I\u2019m holding was a Fairy Marine Swordsman, and to the right is a Fairy Marine Huntsman \u2013 both built from plans using traditional boat building techniques, with keels, bulkheads, spars. I used marine ply, Cascamite glue, and applied lots of coats of paint, each rubbed down between coats. I fitted internal combustion engines and Radio controls in each. The boat on the left is one I built from a photo without plans. I made different designs and eventually used the wooden hull construction method as a pattern to make a fibreglass mould, from which I could then make as many hulls as I liked, in ever decreasing skin thicknesses and weight. I learned about keeping the centre of gravity as low as possible by having the engine very deep down; laminating the engine mounting directly into the fibreglass, increasing the thickness of the fibreglass only where extra strength was needed, but graduating the increase gently from the thinner sections.”<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n Foundation for the Future<\/strong><\/p>\n The idea of an arts foundation course is to provide the student with a broad grounding in a range of creative subjects, thereby preparing them for a degree or vocational diploma. Because Rick already knew that it was industrial design he was intending to do, he chose to boost his experience in relevant subject areas during his foundation.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had choices but I\u2019m not sure if you could have done everything,” Rick says. \u201cI had an interest in Cine film and stills photography by then but I didn\u2019t bother with photography because I did it at home. Then, instead of pottery, I did sculpture. Sculpture was fantastic because I\u2019m better at replicating a shape in 3D than I would be illustrating it or painting it, so I learnt a lot of new techniques, like plaster casting from a clay model.”<\/p>\n \u201cI also did fine art, which was life drawing and still life painting. I was familiar with watercolour and gouache just from playing around with it at home but I discovered oils on the course. Oil on canvas was something else \u2013 my word! What a breakthrough! Fabulous stuff.”<\/p>\n \u201cOn the course I met people who really were good at painting, but I was never especially good at drawing and painting and really just saw it as a means to an end. Things are not very clear in your head so the next stage is pen and paper. Then the utter reality, of course, is the physical world. Not until you get into that do you really start to learn what the true situation is, so drawing was just a means of getting to that end of making something.”<\/p>\n Rick\u2019s education in manufacturing products and manipulating materials was not simply limited to what he learnt on his course. By the time his foundation course had started, his father had moved from aeronautical engineering into structural engineering and was pioneering new ways of using composite materials.<\/p>\n \u201cHe ran his own business,” says Rick. \u201cA one-stop-shop is what you would call it these days, but that term hadn\u2019t been invented then. He\u2019d get the business, design the product, make it, install it and service it. They dealt with huge projects for the National Coal Board, working down coal mines, and they went to Baghdad to work on their sewers. I think they designed and built Europe\u2019s tallest freestanding plastic flue, which was about 200 feet tall and situated in Iceland. So from him I was learning all about making moulds with fiberglass, de-moulding and so on.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rick: \u201cMy Father was educated at Oatlands and then Uppingham, after which he went to Loughborough to study engineering. After the war he joined the Blackburn aircraft company at Brough, where he designed the supersonic wind tunnel for the Buccaneer, and various parts of the Buccaneer, including cockpit sections. The wind tunnel relied on compressed air and it took an entire morning to pump up sufficient pressure for a couple of minutes of supersonic whoosh \u2013 which you could hear ten miles away each lunchtime. His Father was the founder, along with his brother, of the Public Benefit Boot and Shoe Company. They started making workers boots in their front room in Bramley near Leeds, then expanded and expanded by developing new methods, tools and mechanization, and introducing new materials from around the world. They eventually created the first \u2018chain store\u2019 with over 300 stores. There are Benefit buildings all around the country; some have preservation orders \u2013 like the Leeds factory in the photo, which became their HQ. Clearly the roots of invention go back a while.”<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n Design for Industry<\/strong><\/p>\n After completing his foundation course, Rick reapplied to Newcastle Polytechnic, only to find that the old three year course had been dramatically altered and renamed. Nevertheless, having already completed a foundation year just to get a place, he was not about to let the changes put him off.<\/p>\n \u201cThe tutors had reengineered the course based on a lot of research with industry figures,” explains Rick, \u201cprincipally asking them what skill base they needed from students. The new course included a couple of one-term work-placements in industry, which you could extend over the summer holidays. They also added another year, called it a sandwich course and changed the name from Industrial Design to Design for Industry, which was a very precise and clear title.”<\/p>\n Rick\u2019s course proved to be a successful attempt to marry design education with the needs of industry and was subsequently mimicked by other technical colleges. Clearly it must have been important to the college that the first year of the newly-structured course got results, so Rick and his fellow students found that they were pushed very hard.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were the guinea pigs,” insists Rick. \u201cIt was incredibly intensive and the hours were monstrous. There were two days in the week where you were still in the studio at seven or eight o\u2019 clock at night. It was also very, very wide ranging. For example, there was a complimentary studies aspect which took us through all sorts of things like accounting, marketing and law, which was quite interesting.”<\/p>\n \u201cWe received many visits from outside representatives from all sorts of businesses. So, for example, the marketing director from General Motors came in, as did some people who were helping in developing countries, finding solutions to problems using design as a tool. Then there were more obvious guests, like designers who would go through their work, talk about what they did and answer questions. Quite often they would stay for several days and mingle with the students in the workshop or studios.”<\/p>\n \u201cThe student catchment was different to normal courses at the time. At one end of the spectrum you had mature students who had come from manufacturing backgrounds and had run their own businesses. One guy was an industrial artist, so he could do a drawing of a watch and you\u2019d think it was a photograph. Then you had guys straight from sixth form at private schools. The students came from all over the country so we really were quite a mixed bunch, but we were also highly competitive.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rick appreciating the design of a convertible! Rick: “This happens to be my 1969 Triumph TR6 \u2013 which I saved up for in my first two years at Sinclair. It is still running well.”<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n Practical Matters<\/strong><\/p>\n Rick\u2019s course was characterised by its strong bias towards volume production, thereby gearing its students for typical industrial manufacturing jobs. It also made sure that the students got first-hand experience using materials, as Rick explains. \u201cIt was very heavy on practical work, so we had to learn about every imaginable material and method of working that material. So, for example, we\u2019d go through a course learning everything about wood; relative humidity and why you would choose one wood over another, different ways of converting wood into form, the relevant machinery for working wood, and why you would use one machine over another.<\/p>\n \u201cWe did the same with metal, plastic and ceramics. Ceramics took us into the pottery department where we learnt to throw pots on a wheel. We learnt about slip casting, how to make glazes and glaze transfers. I remember designing a range of storage jars of varying heights and constant section. I made my patterns out of jelutong \u2013 a patternmaker\u2019s timber which is very stable but probably quite rare now. I made a plaster mould from that and from the plaster mould I slip cast. I made my own coloured slip so the pigment was in the clay itself rather something applied to it afterwards with a glaze, and then I used a clear glaze.”<\/p>\n \u201cI remember designing transfers and screen printing them. On the course we did textiles as well so we used our textiles knowledge to screen-print transfers before firing the jars in the kiln. \u201cObviously we were never going to come out with works of art or something that was beautifully, easily or perfectly manufactured, but it was about understanding materials and learning where the problems lay. I can\u2019t think of any material that we didn\u2019t use, so it was incredibly wide ranging.”<\/p>\n \u201cEach design task or project we were set included a conceptualization phase where you\u2019d think about different design ideas, maybe an illustration phase, and certainly a model-making phase. Model making was very much on the agenda, but luckily I was pretty good at it because I always made things. I guess I was the top at model making so I really milked it. I\u2019d go to town on making models because they had such an impact compared to even a fabulous illustration, which is still just one carefully chosen view of a design that doesn\u2019t tell you much about it. Conversely, there are no hiding places with a model. You can pick it up, walk around and choose your view.”<\/p>\n \u201cFor our designing they would set us pretty difficult design tasks where it wasn\u2019t quite clear what the point was. I suppose it was a bit like being in the army or the forces, where you can\u2019t see the point of being told to iron your shirt for the fifty-second time that evening! It was a mind game and never done in straight language. It never made clear enough sense so you always felt there was another agenda and there was a lot of student unrest. A few people dropped out and a few were asked to leave.”<\/p>\n \u201cBut with time you realized that they were teaching you to observe or test how good you were at reading a brief and picking out the important things. Whenever a project was set, part of the early appraising would be an analysis and you went away and produced a report on what you thought the question was!”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A drill model Rick made on his Design for Industry course (see main text below). It was featured in Design magazine. Rick: “The electric drill was more of an ergonomic exercise \u2013 I discovered that a carpenters plane handle (a tool I was very familiar with), makes a great drill handle as it is held in a similar way. The other (swivel) handle was modelled on a chisel handle for the same reasons. The yellowish colour is actually lime green.”<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n To Conform or Not To Conform<\/strong><\/p>\n Although Rick enjoyed much of his course, presentation was one facet he intensely disliked. For him, dressing up quickly-sketched ideas and notes, by professionally arranging and mounting them, was simply a wasteful use of time and energy.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you imagine there are 100 hours from picking up your brief to finishing the job and showing it to someone, 25 percent of that went into creating the presentation material,” explains Rick. \u201cI guess I played games where I would conform to the requirements of the set brief but didn\u2019t do it in an especially presentable way. I remember having to illustrate a journey from somewhere to somewhere else using between six and eight images. I chose my character to be Dennis the Menace and did sketches with Dennis and Gnasher going for a walk from some place to some other place. We had to present everything in front of the class and everyone had a good laugh at mine. Now, I\u2019m no illustrator \u2013 I couldn\u2019t illustrate a children\u2019s book, for example \u2013 that\u2019s not what designers do, necessarily. So they asked me to re-do the work and I just re-did it exactly the same way, but presented and mounted it beautifully. They were happy with that, but the content was the same! So I got really cheesed off with all that.”<\/p>\n \u201cLooking back I can see the point, but at the time I couldn\u2019t see the point of half the stuff they were doing and at the end of my first year I was actually threatened with expulsion. I felt I needed to think about my future so over the summer I went to North America for a couple of months, got a Greyhound coach pass and travelled. The head of the course, Alan Burke, had set us a project for the holidays which was to take a sketch book wherever we went. He said \u2018I want to see no less than 50 pages of sketches,\u2019 so I bought a little Daler Sketch pad, probably about A5 size, and took that with me.<\/p>\n \u201cI did about 12,000 miles around Canada, Alaska and the US, and I just filled it. When term started in the second year and I presented this and they thought it was fantastic. Something must have happened there because I thought \u2018What are my options? I can\u2019t leave because what am I going to do if I leave?\u2019 Often the reason people stay with what they\u2019re doing is because they can\u2019t find a better alternative. So I stuck it and thought \u2018OK, I\u2019ll do what they want and what the curriculum is requiring; I\u2019ll pay lip service to it and do it at least to an adequate standard, but then, on top of that, I\u2019m going to do what I want to do.\u2019 So I doubled my work load and that\u2019s how I went forward \u2013 I did what they wanted but also what I wanted on top of that. I thought \u2018They can\u2019t criticise me for that.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cI had my personal review at the end of that term and they were very pleased. Bear in mind that just before the summer I been told that if I didn\u2019t pull my socks up I\u2019d be off the course. I must have somehow figured it out \u2013 the penny had dropped \u2013 and I got into a good routine. Once I\u2019d got that momentum going I just maintained it, especially in the final year which was critical.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n An example of one of Ricks recent idea sketches. Rick: “Interestingly this is a sketch to work out how to assemble a microphone in a handset so it will work and also be water proof. This is a sectional sketch and the passageway, or hole, is only 1mm in diameter. The tapering lines illustrate the effect of \u2018draft\u2019.”<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n Work Placements<\/strong><\/p>\n The last terms of both the second and third years of Rick\u2019s Design for Industry course were set aside for the students to leave the college and take on a design-related work placement with a private company. Over the years, the college had compiled a directory of friendly manufacturers, mostly local to the college but some as far afield as London.<\/p>\n \u201cMy first placement was with a company called Kesslers based in Stratford, London, down by the canal,” Rick recalls. The chief designer there was Alan Kersh and I think Alan might have been at college with our tutor John Elliott, who was in charge of student placements. The list of placements was certainly partly based on a social network.”<\/p>\n \u201cJohn Elliott was our youngest tutor but had worked for Bill Moggridge Associates who were at the time, and possibly still are, the UK\u2019s leading industrial design consultancy. Bill Moggridge himself was actually our external assessor for our final show. John was unusual in the sense that he was very close to our age but still had industrial experience, which was so valuable to the students.”<\/p>\n \u201cKesslers specialized in point of sale displays. So they would have clients like Citizen Watches, W.D. & H.O. Wills and a whole range of pretty upmarket cosmetics companies. They were a one-stop-shop, so they would get the business in, design the merchandisers and the advertising at the point of sale and make and install them. So if there was a newsagent with W.D. & H.O. Wills cigarette dispenser behind the counter, it was probably designed and made by Kesslers in Stratford. They had every manufacturing process known to man under one roof, so that was quite interesting.”<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t particularly like the placement because it wasn\u2019t really my scene \u2013 nothing to do with them, it just didn\u2019t fit me \u2013 but I learnt a lot nonetheless. I learnt about graphic design and lettering, for example, and how one letter is placed after another and how critical that actually is.”<\/p>\n Rick\u2019s second work placement, in the summer term of his third year, was a very different matter, eventually proving instrumental in his career. But at first, it all looked as though things were not going to work out for the good.”<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s so much of what seems to be luck in life,” laughs Rick \u201cI was the last to get a placement in the third year because I\u2019d had such a disappointment with my Kessler placement. When I heard about some of the placements that other people had done I thought \u2018Gosh! That would have suited me much more.\u2019 It was just luck of the draw, but I was more particular the second time, as long as the situation would allow.”<\/p>\n \u201cJohn Elliott was pulling his hair out, racking his brains to find something for me. I remember I was in the spray booth painting a model of an electric drill. Apparently I did really well with this model and a photograph of it ended up in the Design<\/em> magazine. The drill was white with lime green and I was desperately trying to get the lime green colour just right. I tended to live in the spray booth so if they wanted to find me they knew to look down in the workshop.”<\/p>\n \u201cSo John came to find me and said \u2018Rick, I\u2019ve got this company, how do you fancy this? I\u2019ve just been talking to John Pemberton; he\u2019s the industrial designer at Sinclair. You know, they do all the calculators?\u2019 I though \u2018Oh my God!\u2019 I couldn\u2019t believe it. Everyone had a scrapbook of some sort and mine was full of Sinclair adverts for the Sovereign and Executive calculators, so it was a match made in Heaven. I went down and had an interview just to formalize it at the mill in St Ives. I graduated in 1979, so I suppose that must have been \u201977. I remember they already had the TV1A pocket TV on sale and were getting the TV1B into production.”<\/p>\n \u201cI was interviewed by John Pemberton who was a celebrated product designer by that time and had earned many design awards. John trained at the Royal College of Art and, interestingly enough, his external assessor was Barnes Wallace!”<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t remember if John introduced me to Clive at that point, but it was a fairly low-key affair for the company because they employed a couple of hundred people at that time. So I started work as John\u2019s assistant at the beginning of the summer term, stayed on all through the summer, had a fantastic time, drawing and making models. It was just like being back at college or at home in the garage and John and I were so similar.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Enderby\u2019s Mill as it is today.<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n Uncertain Times<\/strong><\/p>\n Eventually Rick graduated from the Design for Industry course with a first class honours degree, and was understandably thrilled. Having gained the top mark from such an industry-specific course, Rick could have been forgiven for expecting to find plenty of work offers waiting for him after graduation but, surprisingly, that was not the case.<\/p>\n \u201cBy the time I\u2019d graduated, my parents had moved from Yorkshire to The Mumbles in the Gower Peninsula of South Wales. My father had taken a position as technical director of quite a progressive company called Replastruct, and I remember the boss had a Ferrari! So I lived there for a while and went through the unbelievably painful business of writing away for jobs.”<\/p>\n \u201cMy girlfriend at the time lived in North Wales and, after a while, I joined her. She had a flat which was the nearest building you can get to Conway castle. It was a fantastic place to live but I was on social security, there were very few interviews and it was just a nightmare. So I was looking for any work. I remember applying for the job of grave digger and another driving handicapped people on a minibus to and from a care home. I applied for a job in an aluminium foundry and by then I was lying very heavily about my qualifications. I said I had two O-levels and even that was too much for them. If only they\u2019d known I had a first-class honours degree!”<\/p>\n \u201cInterestingly enough, our external assessor, Bill Moggridge, offered me and one other student an interview with Moggridge Associates, but the other guy got the job. I think the right guy got it because he was much better suited to it than I was. So, people were getting jobs but, rather like my industrial placement, I was the last to get something. \u201cI thought, \u2018You must be joking. How can I replace John Pemberton?\u2019 I was just a graduate; it was ridiculous. To cut a long story short, I went down for an interview. By that time they had their offices, which they were sharing with an architect called George Vickers, at 6 King\u2019s Parade, Cambridge, so I walked there from the station.”<\/p>\n \u201cThe company had the first floor frontage, right through to the back, but the ground floor was a Lunn Poly travel agent and there was a classical record shop next door. John Pemberton had a room at the back overlooking, what was then, the car park of the Eagle pub. Clive shared a partitioned room with his secretary, Molly Pearson, overlooking the clock tower of King\u2019s College. Brian Flint was on the top floor with Jim Westwood and Pete Maydew. And that was about it.”<\/p>\n \u201cI showed Clive some of my work and, I don\u2019t remember exactly, I think he just said, \u2018Well, when would you like to start? We\u2019d like you as soon as possible.\u2019 So I started in December of 1979. There was going to be an overlap period but it didn\u2019t seem very long, I think it was a couple of months.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember talking to John about my worries and he said \u201cWell, it\u2019s just common sense. You just apply common sense to everything and the bits you don\u2019t understand you just muddle through somehow until you do.\u2019 So I thought, \u2018Right, so it\u2019s common sense!\u2019 Interestingly, my primary school motto was \u2018CS equals common sense\u2019, and the headmaster drove this common sense mantra quite strongly!”\u00a0TF<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Part 2 of this interview can be found here: Part 2<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n\u201cI was always interested in drawing stuff, but I wouldn\u2019t draw a tree or a bird, it really was inanimate objects. I certainly had my pet subjects; trains, railway locomotives and aircraft, because my father was an aeronautical engineer. When I was young he worked for Blackburn\u2019s on the Blackburn Buccaneer. It was a low-level navy strike aircraft which operated off of aircraft carriers. It was one of those classic designs from an innovative British company, dating from the Cold War period, so the plane was designed for attacking Russian nuclear battleships. It had to get quite close to its target, so the navy drafted up a specification called Navy Assignment 39 \u2013 NA39 for short, which is the code for the Buccaneer. The aircraft had to be able to fly below radar, as close to the speed of sound as possible and drop a nuclear bomb! It had never been done before in design terms and was very difficult.”<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI don\u2019t recall any formal design tuition from my parents. I was just forever in the garage making things and trying things out. I think that gave me an innate feel for materials, how things go together and what you can and can\u2019t do.”<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.polymathperspective.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/RickBook1-1024x640.jpg\")
\n\u201cI discovered there were a number of three-year industrial design degree courses, a few of which were geared towards things like furniture design and 3D design. I can\u2019t remember why I approached Newcastle, but probably because I had quite a few drinking buddies at the university!<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.polymathperspective.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/IMG_2342.edit_-1011x1024.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
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\nWe even did jewellery. I designed a set of cutlery, made the blades out of steel and chrome plated them and the handles from ceramics. Years later I remember seeing in a shop cutlery with ceramic handles!”<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.polymathperspective.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/Drill1Ed-1024x685.jpg\")
\n\u201cDepending on the problem or question that was been asked, there are different ways of going about showing someone what you think the answer is, but we had to show a clear line of thinking and progression. In principle that is OK, but the life of a sketched idea is seconds and we would have to go back over our scruffy little sketches making them look pretty and presentable at every stage. Then it would be hours mounting things onto boards and titling everything up. And it was all bullshit really, because it wasn\u2019t about content. To me, design is all about finding design and engineering solutions; how you\u2019ve written you name on it really doesn\u2019t matter.”<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.polymathperspective.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/mic-idea-10001-1024x817.jpg\")
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\n\u201cThen I got a telegram! It was a GPO product which they would wire through and it was from John Pemberton. I\u2019d never had a telegram in my life before. A telegram was usually one line of words \u2013 very short, and this one said \u2018Call me ASAP.\u2019 I thought, \u2018Who the hell is ASAP?\u2019 There were no dots to indicate it was an acronym so it took me two days to figure out ASAP!
\n\u201cSo I rang John and he said, \u2018I\u2019m moving on. ITT are starting a new design unit based in Harlow,\u2019 which I think was to become the company\u2019s European design centre. They were quite large, a bit like Phillips, really. He was heading up the design team there and Clive was looking for a replacement.”<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI already knew a lot of people by then. I\u2019d got very friendly with Molly and her friends when I did my work placement years before. It was a strong social network at Sinclair and people played hard as well as worked hard. So we all went off to the Ferry Boat pub that night and I think I stayed the night at John\u2019s house. I remember Molly coming over to me and saying \u2018Rick, you\u2019re looking very glum.\u2019 I said \u2018I don\u2019t mean to be, but I don\u2019t see how I can do John\u2019s job.”<\/p>\n