Make Works: Ark Colour Design

A small company based just outside of Cambridge, Ark Colour Design have already worked with V&A South Kensington so were excited to get approached to provide some beautiful items for our shop.

Find out more about their inspirations and how the colourful and fun Scottish-made leather products are designed and made in the video below.

Many different things inspire their products: a child's drawing, scribbles on paper. They then add some colour and develop their idea from there.

Ark Colour Design made a few products to tie into our first ever exhibition, Ocean Liners: Speed and Style.

Their Scottish manufacturer is based just outside Glasgow. Paul runs the small, family-run business, and they've built up a great relationship.

All the leather is sourced from the UK and Ireland and it's dyed on site in Scotland.

Ark Colour Design's products stand out; everything is good fun and they love metallic foils and, above all, colour!

Make Works Collaboration

To help tell the stories behind some of the wonderful collaborations in our shop, we have been working with leading Scottish design studio Make Works.

Originating in Scotland and extending throughout the UK, Make Works now have an international reach, including regions in the UAE and Sweden.

Make Works source local manufacturers, workshops and materials, beautifully capturing the people behind them and making them available through their open access platform. Since 2013, Make Works have visited and documented almost 200 factories and manufacturers, encouraging those in the creative industries to have work made locally or independently.

With their profound knowledge of Scotland’s creative industries and talent for storytelling, Make Works are the perfect partner to showcase a selection of our retail collaborations.