Bob Cotton
cotton_bob@hotmail.com
home: 01983 760793
fax/ISDN 01983 810555
The Chapel
South Street
Yarmouth
Isle of Wight PO41

short career summary

Bob Cotton is a new media designer and creative consultant. He is a research fellow at London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London. He is an information architect, and has designed and directed several major commercial cdroms and web-sites, including 3 cdroms for Manchester United, 2 training cdroms for the Training Agency, as well as several other CDs and laserdisks, including Halliwells Interactive Film Guide cdrom, EMI's 'Sight and Sound' laserdisks, and a laserdisk-based emergency response system for BP Exploration. He designed the architecture for the ICA web and intranet, and recently creatively directed the site for the Isle of Wight Jazz Divas Festival at http://www.jazzdivas.tv He is Visiting Practitioner Professor in Interactive Media at University of the West of England, Bristol.

He has worked extensively with AMX Studios - recently on websites for the ICA, for Malibu Rum and a series of interactive and linear information system consoles for the Welcome Wing at the Science Museum, London.

He has written several books on design and new media, including recently 'Understanding Hypermedia 2.000 (1998), The Cyberspace Lexicon (1994), the ICA pamphlet 'You Aint Seen Nothing Yet' (1999) and a keynote paper 'The Smart, Global, Networked, Multi-user, Multi-story machine' for the conference anthology 'The Visual Narrative Matrix' (2000). His book 'Future-casting Digital Media' on technology forecasting techniques for new product development and business development iwas published by Pearson /FT.com 2002, and 'e-innovation' and 'e-selling' were published by Capstone Press in 2003.

He is a past member of judging panels for interactive media at the D&AD, BAFTA and US I.D magazine annual awards. He was external examiner of the MA in Communications Design, Central St Martins School of Art (1996-1999), the MA in Media Design at the University of West England (1999-2003), and is currently external examiner for the MA in Design for Interaction at the University of Westminster, and the BA in Videogame Design at the Southampton Institute. He lectures occasionally at various colleges and universities, including the LCC, the Royal College of Art, Brighton University, Southampton Institute, Bristol UWE, Central St Martins, University College Winchester, and the NY School of Visual Arts. He also supervised training sessions for Eastern European Countries for the George Soros Open Society Institute, working in Prague, Croatia, Bulgaria, Azerbaijan and other countries. Recent public lectures include Futures and Options World Exposition (Paris 2002), 'New Media New Commerce' (ICA London 2003),'New Media Designers' (at the Business Design Centre, London 2003).

Recent career resume
In the early Nineties, he spent a year as interactive media consultant with the Viacom /BSkyB co-owned children's television channel Nickelodeon, working on an integrated strategy for the new interactive media., and developed several CDROM prototypes and new product development scenarios for Nickelodeon and Viacom Media Kitchen. Also in this period, he conceived, designed and directed 'Champions Interactive' a CD-ROM 'soccermentary' of Manchester United's double championship year (published by VCI), he designed and directed 'Premier League', a prototype for BBC Worldwide Multimedia, and 'EFC96' a cover-mounted CD-ROM with concurrent web site for Lawrence Publishing. 'Inside Basket-ball' a FIBA web site for Lawrence Publishing, and 'The Double Double' - a double CD-ROM covering Manchester United's 95-96 season for VCI plc.

In August 96 he art directed a CDROM prototype for Castle Multimedia: the 'Punkzine' (a celebration of punk music and lifestyle). In September 1996 he was creative consultant on a major 'advertainment' web site for Malibu Rum (working with Lowe Howard Spink (Lowe Interactive) and AMX Digital Ltd). In Nov 1997 he worked with AMX Digital as analyst/consultant and information architect on the Sun/ICA New Media Centre website and intranet at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. During 1998/1999 he wrote 'You Aint Seen Nothing Yet', the first of a series of pamphlets in the Digital Visions series published by the ICA..

During 1999-2000 he founded and became Creative Director of the 'edutainment centre' an e-business consultancy, training agency and /new media communications agency on the Isle of Wight, and presented several lectures on new media developments as requested by the IOW Chamber of Commerce, Brighton University, Southampton Institute (with Malcolm Garrett), The Visual Narrative Matrix conference at Southampton Institute and University of West England. In May 2000 Creative Review published 'Studio 2010' a scenario built around likely developments in digital media this decade.. Recently he has published an overview of new media and technology forecasting techniques: 'Futurecasting Digital Media' (Pearson FT.com 2002). During 1999/2001 he has researcher and information architect working with AMX Studios on A/Vs and interactives for Digitopolis and other exhibition spaces in the new Wellcome Wing at the Science Museum

Other publications: include 'Designing for Desktop Publishing' (1990); 'The New Guide to Graphic Design' (1991); and 'Understanding Hypermedia' (1993) 'The Cyberspace Lexicon' ( 1994) and 'Understanding Hypermedia 2.000' (1997) for Phaidon Press, 'e-selling' and 'e-innovation' for Capstone Press. He has also written articles for MacUser, Eye, Compuserve, Creative Review and other specialist magazines.

Other presentations: In June 94, he was guest speaker at the Hewlett-Packard Advantage Programme Conference (Hilton Hotel, Park Lane) with a 40 minute presentation on 'Consumers and the Information Superhighway' - an examination of the product development opportunities facing the telecommunications industry. In July 94 he delivered a one and a half hour presentation on the 'Information Superhighway' to Baroness Thatcher, at the request of Hutchison Telecom. With the graphic designer Malcolm Garrett, in November 1994 he delivered a 60 minute presentation on '21st Century Media and the Graphic Designer' to the Monotype Conference at London University. In January 95 (again with Malcolm Garrett) he took part as a keynote speaker in 'CyberDesigners95' at Aarhus, Denmark, at a conference on new media for advertising creatives: 'Eat the Culture95'. and at the Chartered Society of Designers workshop on new media. In 1995 (with William Mitchell of MIT, and Gillian Crampton Smith of RCA) he judged the American design magazine I.D. annual awards for interactive media. Recently (January 1998), with Malcolm Garrett, he delivered a presentation on new media and interactive advertising for the Sun Microsystems 'New Media: New Commerce' seminar at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. In February 1998 with Malcolm Garrett he delivered one of the 'practising designers' overviews at Southampton Institute. In October 1998 he presented an analysis of e.commerce and online trading to the Futures and Derivatives Exposition in Paris.

He is currently developing a jazz festival and webcast/mediacast on the Isle of Wight, and writing a new book 'After Television' on content and software in the broadband era. In 2002 his books e-innovation' and Futurecasting Digital Media' were published by Capstone and FT.com respectively.

During 2002 to present, he is developing an extensive research project to map the solution-space of new media for content creators and programme developers working across the range of new media. This 'Media-Space' project will provide an easy-to-use 'innovation-augmentation' program, based on a relational database, with which creatives can explore the range of possible synergies and convergences impacting on their idea-generation, production and delivery of new product.

Bob Cotton 2002