Imagining Future Crimes

Ilona Gaynor


Ilona Gaynor is a designer and film maker. She is also Director and Founder of London based studio, The Department of No.
Her work continuously draws upon use of image, rhetoric and cinematic tropes, to construct complexly precise plots,
schemes and narrative texts. Using design as a vehicle, the work aims to manipulate, fantasise and drive forward
the invisible, draconian reaches of political, economical and technological progress and their topologies. The various
outcomes presented, often take form as dense hypothetical plot constructions. Narrative schematics, that manoeuvre
between artefact, artifice and representation. 
 www.ilonagaynor.co.uk 



• Plot becomes the role of the designer - narrative plot politics economics tech law, hypothetical plots
• "we're not coming up with an idea for a form and then imposing it through brute force, but twisting the tendencies you already find in the environment"
• Home Alone - if design is the weapon of the weak, a young child is able to outwit 2 adults
• Catch me if u can (frank wiliam abagnale) - symmetry of design - sleight of hand
• Plot, cunning, traps
• Robert Cutler's JFK Shooting Schematic - drawing as assessment

Prof. Paul Ekblom


Paul Ekblom read psychology at UCL, and spent much of his career in the UK Home Office working nationally
and internationally on crime prevention research, evaluation and knowledge management, crime futures, arms
races and design. In 2005 he moved to Central Saint Martins to join the Design Against Crime Research Centre
where he continues to explore these areas. Paul has developed an array of conceptual frameworks to help
designers 'think thief' in anticipating crime risks to their products, and crime prevention practitioners
to 'draw on design' processes in their work.
 www.designagainstcrime.com/team/prof-paul-ekblom/ 



Thomas Thwaites


Is a designer (of a more speculative sort), interested in technology, science and futures research, as well
as communicating complex subjects in engaging ways. He graduated from the Royal College of Art Design 
Interactions MA in 2009, and have since undertaken a number of commissioned projects, including work on
social trends, futures forecasting, biotechnology, the history and philosophy of science and bicycles.
 www.thomasthwaites.com 



Owen Wells


Owens projects place objects as central figures within speculative narratives, viewing design as a means to
explore, experiment, and define larger systems. To him design becomes a medium to facilitate, document or 
critique systems that are often rendered intangible by their invisability, scale or complexity. His project
"Who Owns The Arctic" was awarded 1st place in the 2013 Think Space Territories competition. He is a 
recent graduate from the Design Interactions Department.
 www.owenwells.co.uk