Ben is also the Deputy Chair of University of the Arts London, a non-executive director of Lexington Communications and a member of the HS2 Design Panel.
He is a Royal Designer for Industry, the first elected for Service Design. In 2020, as D&AD Deputy President, he declined the presidency to make way for a more diverse appointment. He remained a Trustee for another year.
Previously Ben was Group Design Director at the Co-op, working to re-create the Co-op for a digital era, and demonstrate a different way of doing business for an increasingly connected community. As Director of Design at the Government Digital Service (GDS) from 2011 – 2015, he led a multi-disciplinary design team working across government on GOV.UK. He joined the Cabinet Office when GDS was set up to deliver the recommendations in Martha Lane Fox’s “Digital by Default” report.
Prior to that, he was Design Director at Wieden + Kennedy. Ben has been inducted into the Design Week Hall of Fame and has won various industry awards, including the Design Museum’s Design of the Year and a D&AD Black Pencil. He co-founded the Newspaper Club, which he exited after a sale in 2015, and is an angel investor in several start-ups.
In June 2025, he was appointed a CBE in the King’s Birthday Honours for services to design and creative education.
Ben Terrett CBE is the CEO of Public Digital and one of its four founders.
