Irvine (1958-2013) studied design at Kingston Polytechnic in London before completing his master's degree at the Royal College of Art in 1984, after which he moved to Milan to work as a design consultant for Olivetti, the Italian company famous for its typewriters. Founded in 1988, his studio has created products, furniture and transport for companies including Italian design brands Artemide, Foscarini and Cappellini, art publisher Phaidon and camera-maker Canon, while in 2000 he designed a fleet of Mercedes-Benz buses for the German city of Hannover. Irvine most recently worked as the creative director of bent wood furniture company Thonet and as design consultant to Japanese brand Muji, roles he combined in a furniture design collaboration with Konstantin Grcic in 2009.