Su Elsden

I started the business in 1982 and somehow, I’m still here.

 

So how did we get here? Having qualified with a BA in 1975 and cut my teeth in Fleet Street for many years. A roundabout route led me to Newbury and the establishment of ‘PP’.

 

There’s definitely a chequered pattern to my career at ‘PP’ to date: I’ve given talks to youth offenders and prison inmates (about design and our industry); pointed out areas of interest to local business people from the front seat of a helicopter (during Beaujolais Nouveau week - it’s too long a story); drawn the parts of a seed drill, based in Ballymoney, NI, so the Russians could understand its workings (uncomfortably close to Belfast) and produced graphics to explain a new M4 junction to locals naturally worried about compulsory purchase orders. (The tomatoes thrown at the graphics by a disgruntled home owner, resulted in a request from the DoT to cover all graphics in plastic for the future).

 

The business has lived through major changes - most notably from pens on drawing boards to mice and the computer screen.

 

I really enjoy working with a strong team - a team that’s naturally quite a bit younger than myself, but experience shouldn’t count for nothing either! We are an ideal size. Perhaps a very small business to some but uniquely, we are all designers. No account handlers, no managers, no secretaries. There’s no lack of communication and what’s more, it enables us to be highly affordable.

 

And beyond work? Away from my desk, I have an equine challenge. Enough said!