The French designer, Inga Sempé, was born in Paris in 1968 into an artistic family. Her father, Jean-Jacques Sempé, is the illustrator of Petit Nicolas (a beloved children’s literature character in France) and the author of many New Yorker covers; her mother, Mette Ivers, is a Danish illustrator. In 1993, she graduated from ENSCI-Les Ateliers, Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle in Paris, and then studied with Marc Newson (in 1994). She spent two years at Andrée Putman’s agency (1997-1999), and from 2000 to 2001, she was a fellow at Villa Medici at the Académie de France in Rome. In 2001, she opened an office in Paris, developing her personal approach, creating bold, though never provocative, projects that eschew the minimalist trends that characterise contemporary design.