A blur of colour and pattern whizzes around Hackney on a bike: turquoises and blues, interspersed with reds, oranges and magentas, the patterns geometric and floral. As the bike slows, you see it’s not only the clothes that are vibrant – the hair, bound in a bright scarf, is multicoloured, even the eyebrows are turquoise and blue. This is Bethan Laura Wood, 31, one of Britain’s brightest designers, who over the past few years has achieved a worldwide reputation for her unique work.  Like her work, Wood herself is impossible to ignore. She first started "dressing up", as she puts it, early on at secondary school. "If I had the chance I would do it all the time, but it doesn’t go well with power tools." That’s important as Wood makes her furniture herself in her east London studio, and because "making" is key to her design process.  Wood may look like a hippie-punk, but behind the image is a rigorously honed, intellectual approach to design. "I enjoy debate, and make work that always has some critical analysis," she says.  This plays no small part in explaining why Wood has the world’s top brands vying for her services. Her dramatic installation The Fruits of Labour in the windows of the Hermès London boutique was a riot of weird and wonderful "fruits" inspired by the work of the post-Impressionist painter Henri Rousseau. Her first solo show at the Aram Gallery was one of the highlights of last year’s London Design Festival and was shortlisted for the Dulux Colour Awards in two categories. That year she was also picked by W Hotels as one of the Designers of the Future, as well as Design Week’s Rising Star. She is represented by the renowned Nilfur Gallery in Milan.  Wood’s work, which ranges from furniture and glass to textiles and jewellery, is always concerned with colour and pattern. But what is remarkable is the way that she expresses so much of her work through her own form of marquetry. The technique traditionally uses wood veneers to make decorative patterns on a structure, but Wood has developed a method using Abet laminates (similar to Formica). The results are exciting and exquisite, with patterns appearing like geological studies. They could be slices through rocks, or perhaps moonscapes.  Despite the exoticism of Wood’s designs, she says she draws her inspiration from urban life. Zig Zag, an unorthodox form of bookshelf, was based on her studies of scaffolding, fire escapes and cranes. The windows she designed for Hermès may seem a departure from this urban focus but, she says, "They come from looking at fruits in corner shops near my home. They reflect the multicultural urban life that we have created."  In Mexico City on her residency for W Hotels she found inspiration in everything from buildings to sweets. The residency also inspired the gloriously coloured and embroidered Guadalupe Day Bed she designed for the Danish textiles firm Kvadrat, which was presented at the Milan Furni­ture Fair earlier this year.  It was while studying product design at the Royal College of Art (she graduated in 2009) that Wood’s early interest in colour and pattern started to focus. "I finally worked out how to digest and refine the many images I had," she says. "I was able to control it." The importance of her time at the RCA with tutors Jurgen Bey and Martino Gamper goes some way to explaining her rigorous approach to her own teaching at ECAL, the design school in Lausanne where she teaches on the MA courses in design and luxury. It is exciting to think of the influence she will be having on the next generation of students.  As part of this year’s London Design Festival, I am curating an exhibition called Future Heritage at Decorex. Wood is one of 20 designers and makers whose work pushes the boundaries of technique and manufacture. Her creations will sit alongside those of designers including Laszlo Beckett, whose furniture combines traditional cabinet making with digital design, the ceramicist Felicity Aylieff, who makes monumental pots, and Natasha Kerr, who creates collaged portraiture in textiles. It is a celebration of the extraordinary talent of today’s makers whose work can be collected or commissioned. Wood is an example of this par excellence.  Decorex (September 21-24) is open to the public on the afternoon of September 23
Bethan Laura Wood is no shrinking violet, and her multi-hued work, from furniture and accessories to window displays for Hermès, is just as impossible to ignore