Alan Kitching, John Sorrell, Donna Wilson and more tell us about their first time at London Design Festival

The London Design Festival is a magical thing and has been going strong since 2003. In those 12 years a host of big design names have both visited and exhibited at the festival so we were curious to find out what their first experiences of LDF were like. From John Sorrell the founder of LDF, to renowned graphic designer Alan Kitching, it’s a fascinating insight into why LDF remains so relevant in the design world. John Sorrell, designer and founder of London Design Festival I launched the first festival with Ben Evans in September 2003. The first LDF was incredibly exciting but also terrifying because we did not know if it would work. A lot of great people and great organisations got involved and, as we had hoped, there was a lot of support for the idea of an event which took place all over London. I always wanted to use London as the stage for the festival and although there were far fewer events in 2003 than there are now it was clear the idea would work. The first festival had a great conference attached to it which we titled the World Creative Forum. It had some extraordinary speakers and I remember being torn between three concurrent talks by Antony Gormley, Daniel Libeskind and Professor Susan Greenfield. We were the first to create a city-wide design festival with the whole of London as our stage. The huge volume of events by our partners in the north,south, east and west of London is very exciting and unique in its multi-disciplinary approach. London is the most international creative community in the world and if you add that to the brilliant quality of designers across so many different design disciplines it is absolutely unique in the world. Donna Wilson, textiles designer My first LDF was in 2003, the year I graduated from the RCA. I still remember it very clearly; it was so exciting. I showed with Designersblock at the Tea building. There was so much energy and buzz around the setup, meeting the other exhibitors, and then of course the show itself. I really felt like I was part of something special. To save on costs I showed with some friends, and it was great getting feedback from the public on my work. Designersblock was a great place to start out. So many people came to see the show and they had the best parties! I made my first contacts with shops and met some really interesting people, I built my business on this foundation and still work with some of these people 12 years later. It was such a great experience, and the following year I tried to learn from it and showed on my own with a more established collection. This year I’m doing an installation at Studio 1.1 Gallery on Redchurch Street – I really like how LDF is always evolving into new areas and venues. Sam Jacob, architect and principal of Sam Jacob Studio LDF is different from other design festivals, biennials, triennials and so on. It’s more like a gradual amplification of London’s usual design scene. Suddenly there seems like more. More of the interesting stuff that is part of the everyday life of the city, more people showing things and doings things, more venues pushing the possibilities of design. Maybe it’s because it’s diffuse – that it’s based around so many places and so many events – that it doesn’t seem like stepping into a special design zone. Some might argue that LDF should become more like other design festivals – a stronger curatorial or thematic line. But there’s something powerful in its very diffuseness. But maybe there is something about how LDF makes a case for design in a British context, in that it builds on the things we already know rather than setting design out as something against or apart from real life. Alan Kitching, graphic designer My first involvement with LDF was when Quentin Newark was also at the Festival in 2009. I was exhibiting as part of The London Poster Project and I worked with Domenic Lippa. I did visit the festival before then as I remember John Sorrell very well – one time he gathered everyone together in the Festival Hall and got them to sing ‘Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner’ back in 2004 I think. I’ve always thought LDF is a great event and well worth supporting, to me its the best design festival out there. Sarah Hyndman, graphic designer and founder of Type Tasting My first London Design Festival was in 2006. I was exhibiting under the banner of Random Project with a group of students from the Experimental Typography course I was teaching at the London College of Communication. As well as creating work ourselves we invited the public to take part and this became the first of many mass participation projects I’ve now run. Our idea was to encourage a wide range of people to take part to demonstrate that we are all creative, especially those who thought they couldn’t draw. We also asked some of our heroes to contribute. The A6 postcards were all displayed together so the work of creative superstars like Ralph Steadman and Alan Kitching sat alongside those created by my mum and Isa