The Team
Provokateur is a talented team of passionate people: strategists, designers, developers, copywriters, account managers, illustrators and more. They’re ambidextrous, polite and above average height. Most importantly, they know their beans.
JOSHUA BLACKBURN
Chief Mischief-Maker
Provokateur was founded by Joshua Blackburn whose past lives found him in the Labour Party’s 1997 election ‘war room’, the housing charity Shelter and the corporate branding agency, Wolff Olins.
His ambition for Provokateur was to create a new kind of agency that would transform the world of ethical communications.
Apparently the Evening Standard thought he was one of the hundred most influential people in London on no less than two occasions. He’s not sure why, but it was nice to know. Joshua also writes and speaks extensively on charity communications and design.
When it comes to day-to-day Provokateur affairs, Joshua is head of strategy and in charge of interfering in other people’s work.
CHRIS WIGAN
Flying Design Director
Chris is Provokateur’s Creative Director. Over the course of his career he has worked with some of the UK’s best agencies in both design and advertising, and as a result is able to tackle every brief with a truly integrated approach.
He has worked with a diverse range of clients from multi-national bluechips to big brand charities. As Design Director of his previous agency, he created the best-selling ‘Change The World for a Fiver’ book series – from which came the world famous ‘I’m not a plastic bag’ campaign
Chris believes that creating effective design should be at the core of everything Provokateur creates. Design purely for design’s sake just doesn’t cut it. Making a difference does. At the end of the day, Provokateur are communications experts – not decorators.
He is constantly on the lookout for new ideas and inspirations – always believing there’s a better idea out there is a very full time occupation. Combine this with his unhealthy obsession with aerial circus, and it’s no surprise that he gets into some trixy situations every now and again.
DARREN PERRY
Designer of stuff
By day mild, unassuming design-meister D aka ‘the Quiet One’, Mr P stumble-trips his way through the night as ‘Tired Dad’. Raised-up on a diet of 70′s wallpaper, 8-bit computer games and 80′s indie music, he developed a taste for empty spaces, punctuated by flashes of brilliant colour (often orange).
D.A emerged, blinking into the cold-light of the working world at some point in the late 90′s and for a little over 10 years cut his teeth and a hefty design swath branding, marketing, advertising for clients as diverse as Paperchase, Aquascutum, Deutsche Bank and Channel 4 among others. He’s been a part of Provokateur for the best part of 4 years now.
Super power: Black Muji gel pen 0.5
Evil nemesis: Arial Bold / MS Office
ADAM DAVIS
Developing the internet
A web developer since the dawn of internet time, Adam has seen everything from the Big Boom to the Boo Bust and beyond.
During the stone ages Adam built makeshift structures using found objects and bits of string, and over the years advanced his technique to make objects of sophistication, beauty and usability. Hailing from the clear southern hemisphere skies, Adam forged his pixel engineering skills in London’s contract market in the final years of the last millennium, and has seen the internal workings of many ships, including spending some time steering his own.
Now, as the senior technical Provokateer, he can usually still be found somewhere in transit, on a comet between the server and the browser, but will touch down occasionally for another cup of coffee.
KAT THOMPSON
Creative twittering developer
Kat moved to London in May 2011, the day after finishing her degree, getting a tattoo and moving out of her parents home for the first time. She joined Provokateur because she wants to make websites and save the world.
Before discovering web design, she achieved a business management degree, human resource management degree, worked in an office selling global ship spares and gave make up lessons to millions of Polish viewers on YouTube.
Nowadays Kat works hard to learn everything there is to know about the web and she can be found at many web design and UX events including Web Standards, NAConf, DIBI and London IA, as well as experimenting with Photoshop and her many cameras in her free time.
Kat’s specialist subjects when pub quizzing are Twitter and kittens.
HATTY CHAMBERS
Butt kicker
Hatty is Provokateur’s chief butt-kicker or officially Senior Account Manager, and looks after all things project related.
Previous butt-kicking roles have seen Hatty work in the world of corporate communications producing annual reports for BSkyB, Northern Foods and Provident Financial and corporate responsibility materials for Coca-Cola, BAE Systems and De Beers (to name but a few).
With over 10 years experience of the communications industry Hatty has also managed projects for the automotive industry, packaging and signage projects.
Now concentrating on saving the world at Provokateur, Hatty has been attempting to repay the years spent being a corporate drudge by becoming a volunteer mentor, oh and going to zumba!
LIZ BURNS
Get stuff done good
A bit of a traveller, Liz grew up in Hong Kong and France and has worked for successful communications agencies in Australia and the UK. Liz’s pre-Provokateur life saw her work with a wide range of clients including Oasis Youth Centre, Levi’s, Ben & Jerry’s, Unilever, Courvoisier, Jim Beam, Roc skincare and many more.
Clients have been known to nickname Liz the ‘fixer’ due to her ability to save the day when there’s trouble afoot, no matter how large or small the problem.
Wanting to use her marketing know how for good she joined Provokateur where she is now fondly known as ‘Google’ due to her compulsion to Google anything and everything and share it with the group. Did you know the word ‘orangutan’ is Malay for ‘man of the forest’?
ANDREW FOX
Foxy fox
Andrew has been making, designing, advising on, architecting and getting generally enthused about design, brand and the internet since 1995. He’s still as excited by the potential of the humble hyperlink as the latest geo-located social photo-zeitgeist app. The future is fascinating, murky, and we are only just beginning to understand the implications of it all.
For a while, Andrew ran a company called FoxLand dealing with brand and the internet, and he has worked with a wide variety of organisations, from Wolff Olins and LiveWork, to Macmillan Cancer Support and the European Space Agency.
WARREN PUCKETT
Cpt Warren
Warren has been crafting and building positive user experiences on the web for over 17 years. He has held senior positions in the digital industry in the US, Europe and Asia and was the original IT/Web Director of the UK political engagement site called 38 Degrees.
He believes that by focusing the efforts of designers and developers on meeting the needs of an organisation’s users, the results can only be positive for both.
Warren loves playing the guitar, travelling, photography and spicy food (especially Thai).
Meet The Team
Our team is awesome.