July and August have become busy months for the studio. Several major projects along with developing client work are part of the mix:

• the studio is relocating to St Kilda in early August (more information soon),
• a range of new projects are underway,
• we are collaborating with artist David Band from Mahon and Band on a range of prestigious hospitality briefs (more information soon),
• we are developing a mystery project with 3 Deep Design (more information soon), and
• Andrew winged it to Canberra 24, 25 July to “dish up the dirt“ so to speak accounting his experiences in big and small studios. He also delivered a new show and tell presentation to designers at the University of Canberra.

The dirt.

Gary Wilson had an idea 12 months ago to assemble a small group of designers, introduce some food, drinks and have a guest designer tell their story from the hip thus far. Wilson was interested to see what happened when a designer presented without their familiar visual presentation. Abi from Third Drawer Down broke in the idea, Andrew proceeded with this script — speaking candidly about his training, who he worked for, the ten year design partnership, moving to Melbourne, being a millionaire of paper for a few days, the cancelled IPO, being brought out, taking six months off, teaching design, leaving a partnership, developing a new studio and collaborating. The night kicked off at 7pm, with a majority of guests still chatting to midnight. It was an interesting event, there were many questions, answers, points to be made and issues left up in the air… a bit like a dinner party that kicked on to the wee hours, with one or two raids of the cellar.

Show and tell.

At 12.30pm the next day the tour continued at the University of Canberra. Andrew fine tuned a talk he developed for Hongki University Korea in June, investigating the theme of design as a verb — a visual and spoken presentation that explores influences, creative process, learnings with a generous dash of project work. The presentation went over time by 20 minutes, there was enough time for a handful of questions, the laptop was packed up and Gary drove Andrew to airport to meet a 3.30pm flight back to Melbourne.

Thank you to Gary, Alissa, Frank and Anita for your hospitality.

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