Eric Thompson
Head of School, Design Innovation
Eric has been a practicing designer for over 30 years. He holds a Master of Design from Massey University and has worked in tertiary education for 14 years in various roles.
Eric started his design and journalistic career in England after racing motorcycles.
He worked at numerous agencies before establishing his own design practice in London for eight years. Returning to New Zealand after 29 years living and working abroad, he fell into education while enquiring at Massey University about doing a PGDip in design.
Since then, Eric has worked at Massey University, the Media Design School and in Australia at the Billy Blue College of Design and Torrens University before joining the great team at Whitecliffe across a myriad of roles.
His current focus is on how designers will be the future curators of creative technologies and an advocate of design thinking in non-design businesses. He has presented most recently at VIVID Sydney and the international Design Conference in Brisbane; and is a published author at Harper Collins.
He’s also been on national design judging panels and won awards in design, journalism and radio. In his spare time, he writes about motorsport for the New Zealand Herald, talks about it on NewsTalk ZB and surfs a longboard on a good day.
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