“I like to use design to give meaning to objects and when I say objects, I mean life.” Will B

Whenever we experience an object or brand designed by Will B we are delighted with a unique sense of clarity. For more than a decade, this designer, writer and presenter has been touching peoples lives by creating insightful and thought provoking ideas, whose purpose is to be ‘simple’ before fashionable.

Will B’s childhood hearing impairment gave him the motivation to understand life through primary experiences rather than television, whilst also directing him to develop a talent to express himself visually. Then after years of speech therapy, an embarrassing classroom incident gave him the drive to master his oratory skills.

Will B’s fascination with the built environment led him to study transport design where he drove out of the University in Huddersfield in his final year project, the Toniq R sportscar. This led on to designing trains, inventing mousemats and travelling around the world in 80 handbags before founding his design consultancy, www.willbaxter.com in 2007 where he set about using design to simplify the marketing message of a number of businesses in the engineering and technology sectors.

Will B is an enthusiastic and curious gentleman who considers it his calling in life to empower individuals to re-think their own conditioning and to consider instinctive, intellectual and intuitive levels before investing energy. This leaves Will B designing tools that encourage people to overlook the distractions of life and to confidently create something unique of their own.

What did travelling the world bring to you?
Self empowerment through the realization that wherever I am in the world, whoever I am with, I am always the same person. Some days I am successful and happy and others I really am not, but those that feel like a complete waste of time are merely the hard work and practice for the better ones. I know that the higher the highs, the lower the lows.

Do you think travelling made you a better person?
I’d say yes. Definitely. However, the reason I am better is because I got to know myself better, I learnt that I am merely the product of my childhood, parents, and then the effects of the environment in which I place myself. However, my re-actions to my environment are based on how I act in new scenarios, which, for me, were learnt from my parents. So in reality, you ask if I am a better person, I’d say I am nearer to the maturity of my parents as a result, with a few learned lessons that might enable me to advance them in some ways – but its hard to know if that’s for the better or worse. This is why parenting is so important in society, and what makes a great parent, is what they do, not what they say, because a child will copy their parents actions, not their words.

Will seeing other country’s and meeting other people will enrich my life?
You know I will say yes to this…but you’d have to be mental to just stop and knock on someones door for a chat, that’s why you have to do the acceptable thing and meet someone in a bar, or in the park when they have time on their hands, not when they are busy rushing around on the street. OR do what I did and make up a project, because people can understand projects and we all want to be part of something bigger than ourselves and then work it all around that. Think about door to door sales people, they chat to strangers every day on the door, so you, my friend, just have to knock on peoples doors and try and sell them something, or better still, give them something away for free (but not food – they will think you are trying to poison them).

Did travel deepen your meaning of life?
Yes, totally. It opened me up so much and I learnt that because I think something is wrong for me, it doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t for them. Smoking for example, I hate smokers, everyone knows its bad for you and yet half the people in the world still do it. Why? Because you get one life and you might as well enjoy it. They’re not addicted like they tell you, I mean, if you were to put them on a desert island without cigarettes they’d still survive wouldn’t they? No, the problem lies with all of us that even if we know something is bad (for me it’d be drinking, or driving too fast, or riding a motorbike in London), we delude ourselves that we are immortal but the reality is we don’t know what we want most of the time.

I’ll answer this one, “What do we want?” as I imagine you’ll be curious on this. The answer is that we want to be unconditionally loved by the people who are close to us in life, we want to overlook our short term lows and concentrate on longer term highs. Those longer term highs are our personal creative expression, be that art, singing, writing while we live. Then when we get older and we have achieved everything for ourselves, we want to set something up, a foundation, charity etc… that provides for others what we missed from our own childhood. All of this, ultimately, is aimed at providing us with the most valuable commondity in the world, and that is ‘piece of mind’ which comes from knowing how we fit into society.

Do you plan to travel again?
I chose not to travel again until ‘Around the World in 80 Handbags’ was finished, because I wanted to keep the clarity of my last trip in my mind as I finished the book. In fact, I have hardly been out of the UK at all. However, now that stage of my life is completed I do plan to go to away again.

Here’s a brief history of some of the things he has been upto

1980 Age 0 – Bath (UK) Born the son of a yellow BMW driving lawyer and a bus catching Interior Designer.

1984 Age 4 – Wiltshire (UK). Had a life changing operation where grommets were installed into his ears so he could hear fully.

1985 Age 5 – Wiltshire (UK). Spent childhood avoiding the Television. Preferring to draw planes and cars on the kitchen table.

1993 Age 13 – Bath (UK). Went to King Edwards School, Bath. Loved it. Focused on Art and Design Technology in order to realise my dreams of becoming a car designer.

1997 Age 17 – UK Obsessed with the freedom of the open road he passed my driving test three weeks after his birthday with 18 minor points!

1998 Age 18 – Bath (UK). A level results prove that he is not a balanced individual! Art: A, Design Technology A, Physics E, Maths U.

1998 Age 18 – Went of to the University of Huddersfield (UK) to the study ‘Transport Design’. Spent three years drawing cars, sitting around a table with twenty-five guys and chatting about women.

1999 Age 19 – Spent the summer inter-railing around Europe on my own. Travelled to Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, France, Jersey. 

2001 Age 21 – Travelled to Peru with a friend (Matchu Pitchu, Arequipa,Lima and Inca Trail). After one week they’d run out of things to talk about!

2002 Age 22 – Travelled to Czech Republic (Prague) Did a tandem Skydive strapped to an instructor who had his leg in plaster.

2002 Age 22 – Nottingham (UK). Set up the sportcar company Toniq with a friend who still runs it now in 2010.

2003 Age 23 – Nottingham (UK). Took a job designing trains and then spent six years living in the fashionable city of Nottingham.

2004 Age 24 – Travelled to Australia on business and did a bungee jump in Cairnes on the weekend.
“Absolutely the scariest thing I have ever done, I remember standing at the edge, thinking, if I can do this, I can do anything.” Will B

2005 Age 25 – Nottingham (UK). Invented a new type of ergonomic mousemat with a gel wrist support and a paper pad under where your mouse goes. Set up a company and produced 1,500 of them before realising he didn’t want to spend his life making products out of plastic and paper.

2007 Age 27 – Travelled around the world in 80 handbags. (India, Singapore Australia, New Zealand, Los Angeles & New York.)

2010 Age 30 - Moved to London because it reminds me of my favourite city, Los Angeles. Where the people are so free that even the tramps dream. They don’t ask you for one-dollar, they ask you for one-thousand-dollars!

2012 Age 32 - Running his branding business from a castle: www.willbaxter.com