Origin is run by Martyn Evans and a team from an office in Shoreditch. We started in 1998 with offices at The Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane. Our first client was the contemporary furniture store Same, the first shop to open at The Brewery, run by Piers Roberts and Rory Dodd. We conceived Designersblock with them that year as a promotional event for Same and The Brewery. The shop didn’t survive, but Designersblock went from strength to strength and in the last 12 years has shown all over the world and is still a permanent fixture of the London Design Festival.
We worked at The Brewery for 7 years, helping them to shape their development and transform the Brick Lane area into one of London’s most fashionable areas. Fashion East, still an important part of London Fashion Week, and the hugely successful Freerange graduate degree show were two of the events we built early on as promotional campaigns for The Brewery. What we learned there forms the basis of how we work now. We build communications campaigns for property developers and government agencies involved in regeneration using our knowledge of the design and creative industries. Have a look at what we did in Deptford – you’ll get the idea.
We work almost exclusively in the design, creative and property development industries. We work for designers, companies that make and sell their work, property developers, large international brands and governments. We are advisers to CABE, Design For London, The Spanish and Polish Governments.
Martyn spent the early part of his career working in international consumer brand PR and communications ending up with a senior comms job at The Body Shop in the UK and the US.
