Ben Terrett RDI

Ben is the CEO of Public Digital, the Deputy Chair of University of the Arts London, a Non Executive Director of Lexington Communications and a member of the HS2 Design Panel.

He is a Royal Designer for Industry the first elected for Service Design. In 2020, as D&AD Deputy President, he declined the Presidency to make way for a more diverse appointment. He remained a Trustee for another year.

He has been inducted into the Design Week Hall of Fame and has won various industry awards including the Design Museum's Design of the Year and a D&AD Black Pencil.

2021 Profile pic


He co-founded the VC backed Newspaper Club which he exited after a sale in 2015. He is an angel investor in several start-ups.

Previously Ben was Group Design Director at the Co-op working to re-create the Co-op for a digital era, and demonstrate a different way of doing business for an increasingly connected community.

Ben was also Director of Design at the Government Digital Service from 2011 - 2015 where he led a multi-disciplinary design team working across government on GOV.UK. He joined the Cabinet Office when GDS was set up to deliver the recommendations in Martha Lane Fox's "Digital by Default" report.

Prior to that he was Design Director at Wieden + Kennedy, the advertising agency.

B - my letter

He has lectured at Imperial College Business School, Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at UCL, Royal College of Art, Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford and UAL.

Ben's blog Noisy Decent Graphics, photos on Flickr, Ben's Twitter and Linkedin, the GDS Design Principles.

Edited highlights of Ben's keynote at the RSA 'From Persuasion to Usability - Design Meets the Internet' are below. The full version with a transcript is here. An interview about design with Ben on Peter Day's World of Business is here.


Call 07966 282 286
Email ben dot terrett at gmail