A turnstone is, according to ornithologists, a hardy English bird. Capable of lifting its own weight to reveal what’s essential and as yet unseen, it is frequently spotted on the Eastern seaboard.
This Turnstone cares about how cities and services work, the state of infrastructure and the built environment, geeky policy stuff, arts, education and networked culture, problem-solving, opportunity-spotting, writing and diagramming.
So the work covers industry sectors and issues of specific interest to Turnstone: Design, publishing, retailing, consumer electronics, automotive, financial services, energy and clean technology, public sector cultural institutions and others.
Read more about Turnstone’s typical deliverables, approach and clients.
Rachel Abrams established Turnstone in 2006 while she was a Fellow at the Design Trust for Public Space. London-born and raised, she moved to New York in 2000 where she first joined IBM’s User Experience Strategy team, working on ibm.com, before becoming the interactive content strategist for the New York office of Imagination, one of the UK’s leading, independent interdisciplinary branding consultancies.
In the 1990s, Rachel was a current affairs researcher for the BBC, The Economist and in the UK Parliament. Once she discovered the Web, she saw the light and went to design school to learn to tell tales about the near future more effectively and more beautifully. She has an undergraduate degree in Social & Political Sciences from Cambridge University and a Masters degree in Computer-Related (interaction) Design from the UK’s Royal College of Art. More detail, here: 
and full resumé available on request.
In addition to consulting projects, Turnstone’s founder draws ideas for companies and also writes and edits papers and articles regularly. Turnstone’s opinions have been published in a range of design, business and academic media, on and offline. For a selection, take a look at Writing.
Rachel gives public lectures to and about the professional design community too. Listed here are some of the places and events where Turnstone has recently presented and participated, under Talking.
She also teaches and has mentored and critiqued the work of design-focused graduate students, at schools listed here.
Originally sharing space with The Map Office and Potion Design, Turnstone is affiliated to Constellation, an enterprise partnership of multidisciplinary designers, technologists and strategists.
Together, we have offered experience in environment design, interactive installation, branding, design criticism, web site, software and service design, content and development, motion graphics, film and video production, and custom fabrication. Together and independently, we’ve applied our expertise in small collaborative project teams, notably with Map for Grimshaw and The Queens Museum of Art, combining storytelling, design research, visual design, technology and architecture to create compelling, communicative experiences.
- Read what others are saying about Turnstone’s work on our Press page.
- Follow Turnstone on Twitter: @TurnstoneTweets
