Born in Toronto, Canada, Allen Clarke began his design studies in Graphics at Sheridan College. Upon graduating he moved to England to pursue Industrial Design at Leicester Polytechnic and subsequently at the Royal College of Art, London, graduating with a masters degree in Industrial Design (MDes RCA).

Returning to Canada he worked initially as a staff designer at the Ontario Science Centre (OSC) for 8 years. After leaving the OSC he started Clarke & Associates Inc. which has provided design consulting services to numerous companies over the years. In 2004, he was recruited to assist in the development of a new Industrial Design program at the University of Botswana (UB), where in addition to carrying out his UB responsibilities he identified numerous small local industries that could benefit from Industrial Design input and assisted them to refine and rationalize their products to be more cost effective for manufacturing and viable in world markets.

Completing his UB contract he returned to Toronto and is once again engaged in new product & furniture design development for a number of Canadian manufactures. However, he remains very interested and continues to assist small companies in Botswana with design challenges.