Gunnar Spellmeyer

born in 1964 in Osnabrueck, graduated from Hanover University of Applied Sciences and Arts, is a well-known German industrial designer and a design thinking professional. He started his career as a design entrepreneur during his studies. In his early years he won different awards e.g. the Lucky Strike Junior Design Award in 1992. His work is exhibited in private and national collections like Neue Sammlung in Munich, Museum of Contemporary Arts in Frankfurt or Museum August Kestner in Hanover – just to name a few.

Since 2000 he is a professor for Industrial Design at the Hanover University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Together with his colleagues he developed the BA Product Design Courses in Hanover to one of the best European design departments. In 2001 he became a Professor h.c. at the University of Hefei, China. During his academic career he initiated as well an entrepreneurship center called NEXSTER at the Hanover University of Applied Sciences and Arts and a co-creativity space called thinqLab. These initiatives characterize Gunnar Spellmeyer’s intention to enable young talents to design a better world. The way he is empowering entrepreneurs and talents was awarded in 2015 with the ›Innovation and Entrepreneurship Teaching Excellence Award‹ at the European Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (ECIE) in Genova.

With a network of design specialists he formed his design studio ›Spellmeyer Design Ntwrk‹ as a company for design thinking and design doing especially in the field of consumer goods, furniture, toys, food and packaging design. Spellmeyer and his studio worked for companies like Bahlsen, Bree, VW, Oase Living Water or Nils Holger Moormann.

Spellmeyer devotes actively in promoting creativity by participating in public services related to the creative industries: he is board member of one of the german biggest regional creative industries networks called kre-H-tiv and is selected as one of 100 fellows of the German creative industry.