Warren Bramley is a strategic designer, educator, and futures practitioner.

Over two decades his work as a consultant and advisor with organisations and institutions across a wide range of sectors, including Médecins Sans Frontières, Australian High Commission, Somerset House, Norwegian Embassy, University of Manchester, Graeae Theatre, NESTA, Bridgewater Hall, Chethams School of Music, and the Medici Quartet, has been instrumental in informing and shaping his design practice.

His design collaborations include the concept development of Manchester as the Original Modern city with creative director Peter Saville, the re-framing of the Bullet The Blue Sky world tour visual narrative with U2, fictional spatial design experiments with Danish architecture practice Gehl, imagining speculative design futures of Morecambe Bay with Aedas and immersive visual storytelling for the Fight For Peace charitable foundation in the Mare favela of Rio De Janeiro.

A Visiting Fellow in Information Management and Design at Loughborough University he leads, and designed, the module Organisational Design and Network Thinking for Social Impact as part of the Information Systems and Digital Innovation MSc. In addition, he lectures at the University of Sheffield on emergent future technologies in the arts and has given talks and exhibited work at London Design Festival, British Council Latvia, Channel 4, Atlantic Technological University, and Design Junction.

Warren holds an MA in Global Political Economy from the University of Sheffield (SPERI), is an alumnus of the UK Design Councils’ inaugural Design Leaders programme at the Huit International Business School and is a PhD Candidate at the Loughborough School of Business and Economics focused on participatory design and its potential to shape more sustainable and equitable futures through the use of distributed technologies. He is interested in the potential of networked systems, and the intersections between design, community ownership, and innovative approaches to organisational coordination and governance.

Warren’s early career began in music, with the iconic independent record label Factory Records, under the mentorship of the late Anthony H Wilson, and later collaborating with the influential WU LYF, and he is the co-founder of Coloral Cycle Co, a project to bring the original metal cycling bidon of the 1940s Tour De France era, a UK design classic, sustainably back to the bike. 

He lives with his partner, designer Harriet Paterson, and their daughter, on the edge of the Peak District.