Naresh Ramchandani

Years attended: 2017

Discipline: Design

Naresh is advertising and communications partner at Pentagram.

Born in 1964.

Goes to nursery, junior school, senior school etc.

Does the Asian thing of getting good O Levels and A Levels.

Chooses Manchester University because of Joy Division legacy.

Does a joint honours degree in English and American literature.

Starts copywriting career at HHCL in 1990.

Second TV commercial, made for Maxell tapes,wins Best Ad in The World award at Cannes.

Meets the love of his life and future mother of his three children, at HHCL, they decide they can’t both work at the same place so decides to leave.

Moves to Chiat/Day in 1994 and becomes second youngest creative director in London.

Evolved Chiat/Day into St Luke’s, Britain’s first co-operative agency.

Urges the country to Chuck Out Its Chintz in favour of IKEA’s modern furnishings in 1997.

Helps lead St Luke’s to Agency of the Year 1999.

Founds Karmarama in 2000.

Gets Karmarama’s anti-war poster, Make Tea Not War, into every Sunday paper in February 2003 including the front page of the Sunday Times.

Creates monstrous elite designer Van Den Puup for IKEA.

Saves local Asian corner shop from being eclipsed by a new Sainsbury’s with a nearly-racist campaign with the tag line “Please be remembering us.”

Leaves Karmarama in 2005.

Becomes a Guardian columnist and writes 63 thought pieces about how brands need to connect with consumers in a new media-fragmented marketing-resistant century.

Writes and produces Dark Horse, an animation programme about a terrible guitar band, aired on Channel 4.

In October 2007 co-founds Do The Green Thing, a non-profit public service that has so far inspired 40 million people worldwide to live a greener life.

Speaks at the House of Commons about the relationship between desirability and sustainability.

Joins Pentagram as a Partner in 2010.

Devises YouTube’s first ever advertising campaign, “YouTube’s got TV.”

Creates the What Type Are You? microsite for Pentagram that gets 8 million hits and generates 400,000 type diagnoses.

Makes a short film about Henry Ponder, one of Britain’s most thoughtful but least-known poets, which is commended and screened at Cannes 2015.

Pentagram