Jenny Elliott is an award-winning Urban Designer and Illustrator based in Edinburgh.
A creative and collaborative problem-solver with an entrepreneurial background, Member of the Association of Illustrators and Chartered Landscape Architect, my work combines visual, collaborative and spatial design.
I am passionate about how together we can design, build and value greener, healthier, more sustainable and vibrant places. I use my background in built environment design, visual communication and user research to try and support this goal, and am specialised in delivering design, illustration and research projects relating to cities, sustainability, placemaking and the built environment.
A key strand of my freelance work focusses on visual design and communication. In particular, graphic design, illustration, infographics and event photography to help visually document, inspire and communicate projects, ideas, data, workshops, events and design processes. Findings ways to bring complex data or long reports to life, or document stakeholder events through photography or live illustration is just my cup of tea.
I often use human-centred design, systems thinking, and design thinking approaches to enhance collaborative, creative design and research projects, as well as visual communication through illustration and design. I have successfully completed IDEO training in Human Centred Systems Thinking, and to complement my formal Chartership as a Landscape Architect, 1st Class degree in MA Hons Human Geography and Distinction in MA Landscape Architecture,
Background
Jenny has an entrepreneurial background as co-Founder/Director at Edinburgh based award-winning landscape architecture and co-design studio ‘Here+Now’ (2014-2019) - leading teams of designers and researchers to deliver Public Life Studies robustly assessing current pedestrian and user behaviour in public spaces and future design opportunities, in addition to other urban design, active travel, prototyping, user experience and community engagement projects.
I have worked for architectural, landscape and design consultancies, universities and local government across the UK, Australia and Denmark over the last 15 years, on projects focussed on placemaking, urban design, and reimagining our cities and everyday streets and public spaces.
Jenny has also initiated and delivered various pro-bono placemaking projects aiming to deliver positive social impact. In 2020 Jenny’s photography project Looking for Rainbows shared 100 visual messages of hope and short doorstep interviews across Edinburgh during the first Covid-19 lockdown. She also founded ‘Urban Fabric’ (Australia, 2012-2014) which facilitated meanwhile creative use transforming vacant land for 6 outdoor community cinema and exhibitions promoting 40+ local film-makers and artists’ work to 400+ attendees, and launched ‘Hold Me Dear’ in 2013 - an online global community photography project of locally treasured places revealing user experience and personal attachment to places post-occupancy.
Academic Background
Jenny’s academic background covers Human Geography, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design. Jenny won the UK-wide LDA award for ‘Excellence in Landscape Architecture’ for her Masters in Landscape Architecture (Distinction), and Lind Award for her Geography MA Hons (1st Class).
Alongside her award-winning freelance design and consultancy work, Jenny is currently finalising PhD research at the University of Edinburgh. This PhD explores the barriers built environment practitioners experience to realising ‘better’ public spaces for health, well-being and environment in our cities and the ways urban data or other solutions might help.
Recent projects
Jenny recently worked with Living Streets to communicate and illustrate technical street design infrastructure scenarios as part of their Inclusive Design report with Scottish Government (launched 2024), created illustrated scenes communicating the Edinburgh Futures Institute’s mission, and worked with The Stove Network on visual communication (report graphic design, infographic creation) and impact evaluation for their creative placemaking What We Do Now project.
In a former role at the Edinburgh Futures Institute Jenny also led design and delivery of project 'Future of the High Street' (LI Award Finalist 2021), a ‘Smart Places’ series of events, articles and illustrations with key thought leaders on this topic, and brought together University of Edinburgh colleagues (Travel Tech Scotland, Edinburgh Living Lab, Edina, Informatics) and industry partners (Serco, City of Edinburgh Council) to produce report ‘Piloting Novel Monitoring and Evaluation for Street Interventions’ to understand the impact of the Spaces for People temporary street changes for cyclists/pedestrians.
Prior to this, in 2019 Jenny supported the Edinburgh Living Lab on a mix of ‘urban data and design’ project work and graphic design including leading urban design, photography and community engagement elements of project ‘Data and Design for Property Planning: Service Design and Our Assets’ (LI Award 2020 Winner for Excellence in Community Engagement).
Jenny was recently commissioned by the V&A Dundee for graphic design of an infographic for poster production and an exhibition, and worked with client Living Streets Scotland to produce film and photography outputs sharing different user experiences of everyday walking in our cities for their Big Walking Seminar 2022.
Selected talks, exhibitions, published work and awards:
Speaker - Data, Design and the City - University of Edinburgh, 2024
Speaker and workshop facilitation: ‘Delivering Greener, Healthier Public Spaces’ at the Urban Innovation Centre, London, 2023, with Connected Places Catapult.
Exhibition curation, design and presentation: ‘Better Public Space Outcomes’ at the SGSAH showcase at The Studio, Glasgow, 2023
Panelist and Speaker: Living Streets’ ‘Big Walking Seminar 2022
‘Finding Space for Shared Futures’ - published peer-reviewed, co-authored paper about how we used ‘Collaborative Evaluation’ on project Future of the High Street.
Panellist: Scottish Parliament’s ‘Sustainable and Resilient Cities’ event, Festival of Politics 2021.
Invited speaker on Urban Development at Dubai Expo 2020, held Nov 2021.
Designed and led delivery of project Future of the High Street - Finalist for the Landscape Institute’s ‘Partnership and Collaboration’ award 2021.
Speaker at ‘Inclusive Environments’ conference 2021 organised by the Landscape Institute.
Invited as a Judge for the Landscape Institute Awards ‘Excellence in Community Engagement’ category 2021.
Winner ‘Excellence in Community Engagement’ Landscape Institute Award 2020 for freelance urban design, community engagement and visual communication work on Service Design and Our Assets: Data and Design for Property Planning 2019-2020.
Speaker presentation -‘Data and Design for Property Planning’ and ‘Smart Places: engagement and events’ , University of Edinburgh, 2020.
‘Public Realm Design and Assessment’, guest lecture Masters in Landscape Design for Health and Well-being, ESALA, 2017, 2018, 2019.
Speaker and panelist - ‘Reimagining The City’, Copenhagen, 2017.
‘Green active travel’, presentation/workshop of global case study research findings, CSGN Forum, Edinburgh, 2017.
Speaker at Architecture & Design Scotland’s ‘Pretty Vacant’, and ‘Stalled Spaces Seminar’, Glasgow, 2014.
