Philip Brumpton
Product designer in South East London. I've been designing for the web since 1999 and I still write the CSS. These days I run VENDUM Coffee, a small-batch roastery in Plumstead, and take on contract product design work alongside it.
theinteractivedesigner.co.ukphilipbrumpton@gmail.comWhat I do
I design products and then I build them. Not to become an engineer, just so nothing sits waiting for a developer. I work in Figma, then in HTML, CSS and React on the web, and in SwiftUI on iPhone and iPad. I've shipped a handful of apps on my own, which you can find on the apps page.
In a team I'm the person who frames the problem, runs the research, does the design, and presents it to the people who need to say yes. I've done that embedded in squads at Which? and John Lewis for the best part of fifteen years, on replatforms, design systems, subscription pages and accessibility. I know the vocabulary, OKRs and all, but I'd rather talk about what shipped.
I'm looking for contract or part-time product design work, ideally hybrid in London, that leaves room for the roastery.
Work
VENDUM Coffee
A small-batch roastery in Plumstead. I roast the coffee, sell it at markets in Woolwich and Plumstead, supply cafes and wholesale, and run the online shop. I built the lot: the WooCommerce store, the subscriptions on Stripe with Make doing the plumbing, the iPhone app and the App Clip on the back of every bag. It's the first business I've run rather than designed for, and it has taught me more about customers than any research programme I've sat in on.
Which?
Seven and a half years in a squad working on subscription, member experience and the article platform. The bit I'm proudest of is the Subscribe to Which? page: a full redesign, research-led and mobile-first, that lifted conversion by 14%. I also worked on the article template, the design system, accessibility and how the squads actually worked day to day. The role was as much about framing problems and presenting to senior people as it was about Figma.
John Lewis
Led UX and design on the replatforming of johnlewis.com: templates, information architecture, user journeys, and the awkward bit where it all had to fit ATG and CQ5. Shipped John Lewis's first shoppable app on iOS and Android in three weeks before Christmas. Set up a create-once-publish-everywhere workflow for the Edition magazine so it landed on iPad, iPhone, Kindle Fire and Android on the same day. Later ran special projects, mentored the junior designers and signed off the work.
Dods Parliamentary Communications
Ran a team of three print and web designers. Pulled a dozen event and brand sites into one consistent look. It was my first time working with Westminster's material, MPs and peers and select committees rather than baskets and checkouts, and it's the reason I went back and built Who Is My MP? and The Lords fifteen years later.
Steak Media
Freelance for a digital agency across London and New York, where I was living at the time, before moving back.
PhotoBox
Managed and art directed three designers across the e-commerce platform, digital campaigns and print. Keeping a brand consistent when it's printed on mugs as well as rendered in browsers.
Freelance
The dot-com crash took the staff jobs away, so I went freelance: Expedia, Phaidon and Wallpaper, M&C Saatchi, Ogilvy, Dare, WGSN, Proximity, JWT, LBi, Arcadia. Mostly web, some print, and a lot of learning how agencies and in-house teams differ.
eyestorm.com
An early online art retailer selling limited editions by Damien Hirst, Marc Quinn, Gavin Turk, Grayson Perry and Magnum Photos, with the Saatchi Gallery. My first web job. Tables for layout, Photoshop for everything, and the moment I decided this was what I did.
Skills
- Design
- Product and interaction design, design systems, responsive templates, information architecture, typography, print, accessibility to WCAG
- Research
- Usability testing (usertesting.com), analytics (Google Analytics, Contentsquare), Lighthouse, SEO
- Build
- HTML, CSS, React, Tailwind, Astro. SwiftUI, StoreKit, CloudKit, App Clips. WooCommerce, Stripe, Make, Cloudflare
- Tools
- Figma, Miro, Jira, ProdPad, Xcode, Adobe Creative Cloud
Education
BEng Building Services Engineering, Northumbria University, Newcastle.
HTML and CSS at Hoxton Bibliotech, and most of the rest by doing it.
Get in touch
philipbrumpton@gmail.com. I'm also on LinkedIn and the older case studies are on Behance.