We turn good ideas into great products.
From first sketch to final product, we do it all – design, engineering, prototyping, branding. For ten years, we’ve been quietly revolutionising product design from our corner of the North West. We don’t chase trends or design the next seasonal colour. We get excited by tough challenges and only work on products we believe deserve to exist in the world.
Meet the team who make it happen.
Nathan Partington
Design Director
The original founder of npd, Nathan has been living and breathing product design for over a decade. Having previously designed everything from handheld vacuums to premium lighting solutions, Nathan established npd in 2014 as a way of helping Manchester based businesses bring their ideas to life. When he’s not bouncing between our clients and manufacturing partners, he can be found spending time with his wife, two kids and two dogs.
Georgina Partington
Operations Director
Georgina deals with all things operational. Her prior experience in the education sector, leading and managing people and budgets and organising anything within an inch of its life, means the team are always working to the full potential – efficiently and effectively. The designers can focus on designing and Georgina can support Nathan to keep other parts of the business running smoothly.
Kat Murphy
Marketing Director
With over 17 years in creative communications and advertising, Kat has helped drive successful campaigns for major brands. What drew her to npd was the opportunity to work on products with real purpose and stories worth telling. She’s passionate about bringing together product design and brand communication from day one, creating seamless brand experiences that help clients cut through the noise and make a real impact.
Alex Anderton
Product Design Engineer
With extensive experience working in design consultancies around the world, Alex is well versed in the development of innovative products from ideation all the way to production. From a young age, taking things apart and seeing how they work sparked his interest in design and engineering. Since then he’s developed a comprehensive knowledge of materials and a wide range of problem solving skills as a designer.
Rosie Alexander
Product Design Engineer
One of the latest additions to the team; with a background in medical device design and mechanical engineering, Rosie brings a new approach to problem solving within the team. With a passion for designing products with a positive impact, she’s a great fit for the fast-paced creative environment at npd. Rosie combines her mechanical engineering experience with a creative flair to really bring products to life. Whether you’re designing a part for manufacture or creating a complex mechanical system, you can count on her to find the solution.
How we work.
People often ask us “what do you do?” so we adopted the Design Council’s Double Diamond approach to product design in order to simply and effectively communicate the, often messy, process of product development. The basic principle of this approach is that we, as designers, truly understand the problem we are being asked to solve, then clearly documenting all the requirements before we actually start designing anything. This approach gives the project a solid foundation from which to build upon, ensuring that we are completely in sync with the client and their own expectations of the project.
However, each and every client and project is different, and often they don’t fit within the above process. We’ll never offer a ‘cookie-cutter’ proposal for a project, instead we’ll get to know you and your business before tailoring a bespoke offering for our services. Our aim is to slot into your existing business process and flow, becoming your outsourced ‘in-house’ design team but without the worry about overheads, headcount and all the other challenges that come with hiring an in-house team of designers. We’ve made a success of this over the years and have a number of clients who we’ve worked with on multiple projects over the years, being on-site when needed and on call when not.
