We work with the combined passion of creating design solutions to make people’s lives richer, and the commercial understanding to make them incredibly successful.

We work with the combined passion of creating design solutions to make people’s lives richer, and the commercial understanding to make them incredibly successful.

In the last decade V2 has created products that have won over 50 awards, generated over 200 patents and brought in over 3 billion dollars in revenue for our clients.

What We Do

We work on a diverse range of projects, and it is this diversity that not only keeps our team fresh, excited and engaged but also informs and enhances creativity through the transfer of knowledge and skills between disciplines.

Whether we are designing a single product, complete ranges, experiences, brands, environments or strategies, our blend of research, insight and design creates thoughtful solutions that succeed in their markets.

Consumer
Electronics

Home
Appliances

Automotive

Wearables

Toys

Tech Development

Lighting

Factory Co-Design

Research

Soft Goods

Experience Design

Furniture

Strategy

Materials & Finish

Manufacture

Patent Generation

Engineering

User Interface

Prototyping

Visualisation

Branding

Interior & Retail

Photography

Crowd Funding Campaigns

Packaging

Who we work for

We are experts in global design, with experience of working with a large number of companies from around the world. This deep understanding of cultures, brands and markets creates an unrivalled service. Our work has seen us help Chinese brands launch in America, Japanese brands move into China and offer expertise and insight for success in Europe and America.

“V2 Studios, with its diligent and delightful manner based on extraordinary passion for design, has never failed to exceed our expectations and has continued to provide truly meaningful inspiration."

Chief Global Design Manager, LG

“V2 immersed themselves in the world of our product, balancing our grand vision with a relentless attention to detail. Their team feels like an extension of our own team; something which as a startup can be the game changer. We are proud to work with such an outstanding group of people."

CEO & Founder, Goodbox

“I have had the pleasure of working closely with V2 studios for over 15 years throughout my time in the toy industry and across a broad span of categories from Preschool, Interactive Toys, Robotics, Electronic Gaming and Lifestyle and I am incredibly proud and pleased with the output of the partnership."

“Be it insightful design research, early conceptual work that makes myself and my teams think differently, exceptional detail in refinement and final design for manufacture or consumer facing visualizations, the team at V2 Studios have always delivered above and beyond expectations with highly valued consistency and trust on both timelines and budget."

“V2’s understanding of how design fits within a business has helped create incredibly successful products with impact and longevity in the market."

VP of Design, Hasbro

How we work

We work in many ways for many types of businesses.

End to end design service

We offer end to end design support for businesses from research, strategy, design, prototyping, branding, engineering, visualisation and manufacturing support.

Internal design team support

We work hand-in-hand with internal design teams, offering both long-term and short-term support. We are proud to be part of the silent team behind some of the most successful and iconic products of the past decade for the world’s biggest brands.

Self-initiated strategic design

We undertake self-initiated strategic design projects in the areas of sustainability, health, education and wellbeing. We then licence our solutions to industry or set up creative partnerships to help create real change.

Start-up partnerships

We invest in start-up businesses – if we think you’ve got a good idea we will help support and grow the opportunity until it reaches its true potential. This includes the implementation of crowdfunding campaigns, innovation management and IP generation, design, prototyping, testing and production.

Who we are

Studio Philosophy

It’s simple – we are all about good design, measuring our success through the success of our work for our clients. This philosophy has created strong long-term relationships and friendships with the companies we work for.

“V2 has always been about fulfilling our passion as designers and never about prestige and profit. We don’t pitch, we don’t do talks, we don’t embroil ourselves in PR and we don’t sub contract. We just design, because we love it, and it is something we are incredibly good at.” Chris Vernall, Co-Founder

Give Not Take

V2 was set up by brothers Chris and Andy Vernall in 2004 with a strong belief that design should be used as a force for good to create positive change. Today we are even more committed to this statement.

As a business V2 substantially invests both time and money into tackling global issues through self-initiated projects and partnerships. Current projects include packaging that helps the reduction of food waste, multiple solutions for the water crisis, tap to give payment solutions for charities, devices and systems to deal with addiction, educational tools and wellbeing solutions.

  • Chris Vernall Founder / Director / DesignerDirector of Strategy and Innovation

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    Having trained as a product designer, Chris started his career almost 25 years ago in Amsterdam designing motorbikes for Yamaha. Having gained experience across a wide range of products among Dutch design consultancies, he moved to London where he spent several years working as an interior designer. Projects here included a variety of premium retail store roll outs and high end office design.

    Looking for a new challenge, Chris then took a role as a designer at CRL, the UK’s most prolific technological research and development facility. Here, scientists and inventors pioneered innovations such as stereo sound and airborne radar; they turned television into a commercial product and developed the CAT scanner. The brief was simple: to invent products that could be commercialised and would revolutionise markets.

    As the head of design Chris initiated a process that successfully took emerging technologies into radical new markets; creating serious commercial opportunity and solving real consumer problems in a new way. He took materials technology developed for the medical industry and placed it into food packaging, multiple wireless and signal processing technologies into the toy industry, sensors into the gardening market and RFID into the education sector.

    Chris’s keen ability to understand gaps in the market has led to the generation of an impressive catalogue of commercially astute intellectual property. Bringing almost a decade of IP and innovation skill out of CRL has meant that V2 not only designs products for its clients, wherever possible it creates patentable innovations that give ideas a secure foundation.

    Chris has always had a passion for humanising technology. This initially led to collaborations in 1997 with BT Labs on Chris’ augmented reality system and in 2001 he created and initiated a ground breaking research program into digital/physical learning tools. The two-year project, in collaboration with Cambridge University and Warwick University, allowed school children to be able to build stories, arguments and understand the fundamentals of coding through constructing with tangible objects linked to digital content. These learnings have been evolved and enhanced over many years and Chris – a highly respected specialist in this area – remains actively involved in multiple projects involving augmented reality and smart STEM based learning tools. V2’s learning through play solutions have seen them win the coveted Toy of the Year at the Toy Association’s Toy of the Year Awards twice in the past decade.

    In-depth research, leading to the enabling and discovery of new opportunities, has been at the heart of how Chris has worked all his career. As such, it has been how V2 has worked since its inception. As a student, a design project opened up the opportunity to work as a paramedic’s assistant for a summer and this kick-started Chris’ empathic research process that has been going on for quarter of a decade. Unfiltered hard-hitting life and death situations gave shocking and invaluable insights whilst highlighting how strategic and human centred design can create real positive change.

    Working hand-in-hand with medical experts and equipment manufacturers, Chris helped develop the first defibrillator designed for non-paramedics/doctors to be placed in public spaces. Some 25 years later these devices have become commonplace in a wide variety of environments around the globe, from shopping centres to offices and health clubs to schools and has saved countless lives.

    In recent years Chris has become more heavily involved with V2’s humanitarian and environmental projects. Each year V2 increasingly invests both time and money into ethical projects; these currently range from tackling the water crisis, to addiction, homelessness, food waste and mental health to name a few.

    Chris heads up V2’s strategy and innovation, as well as V2’s ‘Design for Good’ humanitarian and environmental projects.

  • Andy Vernall Founder / Director / Designer

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    After graduating from the Royal College of Art, Andy has worked for some of the most successful companies, brands and designers, including Philips, Ridley Scott and Ross Lovegrove, to name a few. This vast and varied experience has given Andy an unrivalled depth of knowledge, experience of internal design processes and the ability to work successfully as part of an in-house design team in over 20 countries throughout the world. This experience has been invaluable in developing V2’s global market insights and strategy, which makes up a large part of its work today.

    Andy has championed V2’s tailored approach to clients. This personal and flexible service allows for full understanding of the cultural and corporate differences of each company – every nuance is important in delivering the right solution for clients. V2’s design collaborations have resulted in around 40 international awards, and most importantly, the building of long-standing and successful relationships with global clients.

    In 1998 at the RCA, Andy was fortunate to be tutored by some of the biggest names in design including Ron Arad, Jasper Morrison, Sam Hecht and Ross Lovegrove. This wealth of experience gave Andy an amazing grounding in design, and helped develop his love of a more crafted, sculpted, futuristic vision of design. In his early career, Andy was at the forefront of taking experience design into new markets, combining product design, storytelling and user interface specialisms into the computer game and film industry. Creating worlds rather than just individual objects for the likes of film giant Ridley Scott helped Andy develop a skill set around designing the whole ecosystem. This skill remains important today – a product’s place in its ecosystem will determine how it should be developed, marketed and sold.

    Moving to electricals powerhouse Philips, Andy started out working on several strategic vision projects – looking ahead to the future to understand how advancements could change a product stream or create entirely new product categories. Understanding the triggers for change in the context of an ecosystem enabled Andy to begin to really effect change on businesses and large consumer electronics brands.

    At Philips Andy also designed many of its most successful consumer electronics products. This sparked Andy’s interest in global design, working alongside manufacturing in high volume production to lead innovation and change. Negotiating with factories to push the boundaries on manufacturing techniques and processes in order to create innovative, beautifully made products that stay true to the original design intent has now become ingrained.

    Having employed external design agencies while he was in-house, this insight and experience led to the natural desire to set up a consultancy. The ability to offer in-house teams exactly what they need is paramount in V2’s objectives.

    Andy is founder and design director at V2. He is also associate creative director of brands, and on the board of several other businesses, alongside brother Chris.

  • Marc Bull Partner / Lead Designer

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    Marc joined V2 just one year after it was established and has played an integral part in helping the business grow and evolve. Not only does he have a vast array of iconic designs under his belt, he has also been at the forefront of setting up V2’s lighting and furniture design brand Vitamin, and the driving force behind V2 Toys.

    Marc is incredibly talented at turning ideas into real manufacturable solutions in the most effective way possible. Whether it is the production of radical forms or the engineering of complex mechanisms, Marc is indisputably one of the best in the business. His ability to sculpt effortlessly in 3D CAD is renowned globally amongst our clients and factories and he has given masterclasses around the world in 3D surfacing.

    This amazing blend of ideation with implementation has seen his lighting designs for Vitamin become best sellers through their unique design fused with clever manufacturing. He has always been interested in creating design that is inclusive rather than elitist and at a price point that is accessible to a large market.

    His unique touch flows through all the design projects he works on, ranging from electric vehicles, high end audio, lighting or footwear to domestic appliances. But when it comes to toy design, Marc has no equal – leave him in a quiet room for a day with a toy brief and the results are instantaneous and astounding.

    Unofficially crowned the world’s nicest man, Marc selflessly invests a great deal of his time into training and developing the skills of the designers who work with him and aligning the skills of the team. Lucky people.

  • Jonny Banton Partner / Lead Designer

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    Jonny is a key member of the design team and also runs V2’s prototyping and visualisation departments, and these play directly into his strengths. Jonny keeps a tight ship around quality and efficiency.

    Making is an essential part of V2, and is the heart and soul of what Jonny does best. Ever since he was a young boy tinkering in the garage with his father, building and dismantling all kinds of electronics products, to today, which sees Jonny build everything from drones to smart home devices, making is second nature.

    For Jonny, the quicker V2 can move into something 3Dimensional the better. Whether it is quick card models, rough foam block, 3D printed forms or precision machined pieces, V2 has the in-house facilities to get ideas into physical form quickly and effectively. Jonny also brings his electronics skills into creating working prototypes that communicate behaviours and interactions whenever needed. This is followed by extensive testing and trialling of prototypes to gain the necessary invaluable insight and feedback.

    Jonny’s natural talent for creating stunning visual content has helped build a team producing some of the best product computer rendering in the industry, with results seen on numerous adverts, packaging and video animations. The fact that Jonny excels all the way from idea and design, to prototype and rendering means he has an absolute full understanding of the product he is visualising.

    Jonny’s keen interest in emerging technology and the maker community keeps him streets ahead of current trends. His early interest in building and racing high speed drones, for example, led to a client asking V2 to define a new genre and market of racing drones to help them enter this exciting emerging sport.

Creative Balance

We believe in creating an environment that nurtures creativity. Our open studio is about getting talented designers to work together selflessly as one unified team. It is this teamwork that is an essential element in V2’s success. Friends as well as colleagues; a fun space not just a work space.

We run team trips around the world to inspire and inform and hold team activities outside of the studio including skiing, sailing and cycling. We are building on this philosophy with the construction of a satellite studio on the beach. A commutable workspace on the coast that is designed to inspire, energise and bond our team and delight the clients who use the creative space with us.