Brintons supports new design talent by recruiting Kayleigh Jones to its UK design team
Carpet design and manufacturing company Brintons is delighted to welcome recent Birmingham City University (BCU) Textile Design graduate Kayleigh Jones to its dynamic UK design team based at the company’s Head Office in Kidderminster.
Over the last four years, Brintons has collaborated closely with BCU’s School of Fashion and Textiles, lending its support to Textile degree students during their final year projects and promoting the students’ work at leading industry events and design festivals.
As part of this close collaboration, Brintons Commercial Marketing Manager, Sarah Draper, and designers Jodie Hatton and Jay Ralley-Jones were invited by the university to award a prize for Design Innovation to a graduate of the School of Fashion and Textiles Graduate Show 2016.
Impressed by the originality and inspiring nature of her material concepts, the Brintons panel had no hesitation in awarding the prize to Kayleigh Jones, a graduate of BA (Hons) Textile Design (Constructed Textiles), for her project ‘Puff, powder, Gloss – cosmetic tactility’ which was influenced by the seductive materiality of cosmetics.
After seeing Kayleigh’s winning collection at her degree show and again at New Designers 2016 (which showcases fresh-thinking and innovation among new designers), Brintons decided to offer the young designer the opportunity of joining their busy design department.
In this role, Kayleigh will gain invaluable experience working alongside the highly skilled team of Brintons designers as they create bespoke carpet designs for leading interior projects of every size, all around the world.
Kayleigh Jones explains: “I was first introduced to Brintons’ vast and wonderful archive when I was working on my dissertation ‘Do interior textile designers re-invent the past?’ I used their archive as part of my research.
Brintons kindly supported me by producing a piece of carpet for my final project and awarding me with a design innovation award. As a trainee creative designer at Brintons, I’m now able to use this unique archive as a daily source of design inspiration.”
Charmaine Stint, Development Manager for the Institute of Creative Innovation, Birmingham City University comments: “This is a great opportunity for Kayleigh and we are delighted to see how her career has progressed since graduation.
Through the Trends project and her portfolio work, Kay demonstrated a high level of creativity and design talent which highlighted her calibre as a future designer; It’s always good to see students who embrace new opportunities which harness their high levels of creativity and design output, her new role within Brintons is a great achievement.” Jodie Hatton, Brintons Designer, remarks that: “The award Brintons presented to Kayleigh was for innovation; Kayleigh was a clear frontrunner in this area, due to her experimental approach to materials.
She used many different techniques in her work such as coating fabric with paint and silicone, which created really unusual innovative fabrics. Kayleigh has fitted into the Brintons team with ease and is really eager to learn the processes involved, her background in weave has aided her well.”
