Our co-founder and creative head, Ben Casey, was handed The President’s Award at The Sharks Creative Festival, Kinsale, Ireland, one of the longest running creative festivals in Europe.

The criteria is to honour the achievements of someone who has made a significant impact in the creative industries. When announcing his choice, festival president, Mark Denton sited the breadth of Ben’s work, from stamp design to a football stadium and from typographic design to tv commercials. He also talked about Ben’s role in raising the level of creativity in the provinces to challenge the dominance of London. And how he’d managed it both in education as a tutor at Preston Polytechnic (now UCLan), which monopolised the D&AD Student Award Schemes and then in industry where his company, Manchester based The Chase, reached the number one spot in Design Week Magazine’s Creative League Table (based on a points system for national and international awards won over a three year period). Mark had obviously done his homework into how someone christened Robert Bernard ended up being called Ben by playing the opening sequence to a popular 1960s TV show featuring Dr Ben Casey which became a nickname that stuck.