It’s a journey that began back in 1991 when, as a fresh-faced graduate, Williams spent weeks trudging the streets of Milan, portfolio in hand, cold-calling on design studios and designers like James Irvine, Achille Castiglioni, and Marco Zanuso. Around that time, while attending a lecture by Alberto Alessi, Williams intervened, uninvited, to show his student portfolio. His tenacity – some might say, audacity - paid off; Williams received a brief from Alessi, leading to the design of the Alessi Honey Pot and Sugar Jar. Williams remains the youngest designer to have designed under the coveted Alessi banner.

At the start of 1992, Italo Lupi, editor of the renowned Domus magazine, featured Williams’ work in his final edition – Williams was just 23 years old. The article, written by Enrico Morteo, commented how, on occasion, “…British designers assume a straightforward approach, enabling their objects to capture all the complexity of a given situation, without overloading them with Baroque semantic implications. These much-esteemed young designers include Jasper Morrison, Ron Arad, Nigel Coates, and Marc Newson. Theo Williams seems to have some relation with their approach.” After seeing the article in Domus magazine featuring the kid’s camera and radio Williams designed at college, the owners of Technogym approached him simply because they liked the design.

Williams’ early years in Milan, working for Technogym, where he designed the XT cardio fitness range, and as an in-house product designer for Nava Design, exposed him to the working methods of in-house development and, importantly, the process of industrial printing. His experience at Nava Press, where graphics and printing were combined intensively to produce high-quality materials for Italian fashion houses, was career-defining.

Williams explains: “I was fascinated by the guys at Nava, especially the printing and packaging production, their wealth of knowledge from the old printing methods being adapted to the new digital machine. When I arrived in ‘91, they were clearing out the old wooden blocks from the past; they were still using them! But it was the attention to detail and perfection the Italians taught me; they were simply perfectionists at design, printing, and production. I remember them fondly; they were my second family.”

That desire for his simple, strong, straightforward designs has been woven into Williams’ design philosophy ever since. As Dario Moretti put it in his article in Ottogano in 2000, “In a few years, Williams has created a series of small objects that insert themselves into the daily scene with a tranquil but precise identity….Williams is a designer who makes materials talk.”

He went on to develop packaging for Prada, Ferragamo, and Armani. Indeed, Williams’ understanding of how industrial methods underpin great design has remained a constant throughout his career: “I could see that design was about so much more than the product. I wanted to reach much further into the mechanisms of a working company: the construction of an image, the direction for the company as a whole, how my products were made, produced, packaged, and communicated.”

That ethos was evident in his work for the French design company Lexon. They lured Williams to Paris for two weeks a month to ‘bring soul to their products, as their Paris-based Art Director. Commenting on his influence at Lexon, House & Garden Magazine described how “Williams’ design spirit has already infused everything from the packaging to the catalogue to the items themselves….” Intramuros. His ‘OYO’ computer cord for Lexon was later awarded the Design Plus Award in 2002.

His collaboration with Japanese company Mono Comme Ça incorporated shop design development, packaging and displays, and the products themselves. Meanwhile, projects for Salvatore Ferragamo, Giovanni Testino, and – during a two-year stopover in Amsterdam – for Mexx as Design Director cemented Williams’ credentials as creative director as well as designer across the design capitals of Europe.

Williams’s grand tour of Europe brought him back to the UK in 2006 to become Head of Design for Habitat. Notably, the SS09 collection received many plaudits; the season focused on the pure design of the product and steered away from the high street narrative of a seasonal collection, focusing instead on well-developed and designed products representing contrasting production techniques.

His 2009-2010 catalogue for Habitat marked a turning point for Williams and the company. It represented the culmination of all his experiences over the years, showcasing the home and the city as the Habitat we live in. Combining a real sense of honesty of observations about where we live, it met with critical acclaim and resonated perfectly with the heritage of Habitat.

An influential two-year spell as Head of Design for John Lewis followed. With a remit for the design strategy for home seasonal collections, Williams made his mark by creating the innovative and inspiring ‘HOUSE’ brand. John Lewis commented t, “…his work on the ‘HOUSE’ range, in particular, has created an important legacy for our home product assortment.”

Williams is undoubtedly one of the few influential British designers who not only creates sleek, industrial designs for everything from furniture to stationery, melting graphics and materials together, but he also understands the industry, the costs, and the manufacturing process and applies that understanding of the market to his products.
PC.