For me, the joy of Dark Mofo is in the purity of a single idea, beautifully and consistently and unwaveringly executed across every brand touchpoint. Even as I use the word ‘brand’ I shudder, as I’m sure anyone working at DarkLab – the creative studio for Dark Mofo – might. It seems such an inappropriately mundane word for such a fuck-you festival. Be this as it may, the attention to detail, everywhere, is simply astonishing. It’s in your pre-festival experience – the instagrams and e-newsletters beautifully considered both in design and expertly-written content. The enigmatic text messages inviting you to be part of something ‘secret’ -  if you wish, putting a smile on your face before you’ve even packed your smalls. It’s in the enigmatic message greeting you atop the terminal building, before you’ve even steeled yourself with a deep breath and stepped off the plane.

It’s in the wayfinding, signage and graphics all around town, it’s in the toilets of the ferry terminal with its lighting altered to the distinctly red Dark Mofo glow. It’s in the choice and colour of materials that dress the spaces, the curtains, the lighting, the bar menu, the horses taking people for a canter around town. The goddamn horses, people! They were sporting pointy red devil’s ears.

More than any of that. I’m astonished at the level of local buy-in. As you gaze around Hobart, you can see commercial and private buildings all getting into the Dark Mofo spirit. The atrium of the Telstra building is lit up like some ghastly red horror movie scene, as are its neighbours. Dotted about, here and there, they have all decided to join the party – presumably masking their current lighting with red filters or replacing with red bulbs. But here’s the thing. It’s not just any red filter. It’s THE Dark Mofo red. Everywhere. No-one is slightly ‘pink’ or gone for a rusty-red, it’s the luscious, distinctive, blood-curdling Dark Mofo red.

I’d love to know, are they all supplied with PMS-matched red filters? Have Dark Lab gone to the extent and expense of distributing brand kits across town? And even if they have, how come there are no rogue elements? Or are Hobartians intuitively blessed with on-brand design nous?  Whatever…the fact that it is all consistent astounds me.

The devil is in the detail, as they say. Bravo Creative Director Leigh Carmichael and team. Joyful. Simply, joyful.

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Matilda unearths the best in Australian and New Zealand product design as yet unseen in Europe. Conceived by the wonderful Jenni Carbins, it will ensure that 13 of Australia’s leading designers will gain the international recognition they deserve.

It marks the beginning of an ongoing commercial proposition for the designers to have permanent commercial representation in the UK.

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Listening to him is a bit like holding your breath underwater in the bath; it tends to focus you on just one thing. In this case, the power to think differently about how we move about on our planet, to escape the rigid confines of your mind as it understands it in the present, and imagine what it could be like in the future. Can roads design the car of the future? Can our cars look after us in our old age? Be our friend and companion as well as our vehicle? Will we give up personal ownership to share? Not because we are required to and feel we ought to, but because we demand it? Captivating.

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Be smart. Be quick. Get yourself down there!

Forthcoming highlights include:

1. Retrofitting the Grid: New Designs for Old Buildings – Tues 8.15am

2. Sustainable and More Profitable – Wed 8.15am

3. Creative Industries Innovation Centre: The Timely (Design) Doctor – Wed 12 midday

4. The Reinvention of Punt Road. A Drawing Masterclass – Thurs 10am

5. Experience Corner – Thurs 6.30pm

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There are people you meet in life, who may amuse, entertain, even keep you on your toes, but there are few that truly delight, both intellectually and creatively. We all know them. They just have that extra something that makes us sit up and take notice, manage to keep our (otherwise waning) attention and make us miss them when they are gone. Robbie Robertson, Managing Director of experiential design consultancy, E2, is one such person. But (fortunately) you don’t just have to just take my word for it. The long list of brands that have come to E2 in the last two years of its short life is testament to their ability to not just offer, but to deliver something rather different indeed. E2 have completed over 178 projects in the last two years and are currently working on another 40, for brands both here and abroad, including Qantas, Commonwealth Bank, St George, Sony, Kodak, Westfield, Herman Miller, Virgin Mobile, News Ltd – and the list goes on.

It is not hard to see how clients are engaged by them. But reeling clients in with a fancy sales pitch is the easy part as we all know, but retaining them and nurturing them so that they become a part of the fabric of the place itself and wouldn’t even consider going anywhere else, is quite a tall order. This is where E2 excel. There are few consultancies that would clear desk space in the studio for clients to work alongside the team should they so wish (TrueLocal and BCU), agree to their client presenting creative back to their Board without the need for E2 to even attend (Tarocash and Virgin Mobile) or could win over a client by likening them to a Roast Chicken Dinner (Commonwealth Bank).

So, where did all this come from and exactly how are they managing to achieve so much, so quickly? The driving force behind E2 is the collaborative partnership of Robbie Robertson and Creative Director Alex Ritchie, both ex-Imagination in London – the pioneering consultancy arguably the forefather of experiential design – that has worked with some of the world’s top brands from Diageo to Aston Martin. But a more recent meeting of minds at branding giant Landor, compelled them to do their own thing “we saw a niche in the market: experiential environments but from an extremely strategic and multi-disciplined approach” explains Robertson. “A lot of companies are doing it and very well, but often as an add-on or a reaction to a larger brief, we look at environments not just from the usual floor management perspective but from a brand perspective, from a communications perspective, we look at it from a multi-faceted approach.”

At the heart of their philosophy is their belief in the ‘show me’ aspects of a brand’s delivery believing that it is experience, rather than information, that is the prime driver of human behaviour. This means placing as much of a budget into how the consumer actually interacts with a brand, across all five senses, and exploring how the brand can better respond to the needs and desires of the customer. As Creative Director Alex Ritchie explains “In our opinion, starting from the bottom up—from the customer’s viewpoint—rather than the top down from the corporate viewpoint yields a can’t-fail strategy. That is, consumer research that observes and studies consumers’ interactions with products and services yields the most valuable research. Not merely developing products and brand communications based on what the corporate R&D and marketing departments think their customers want. Observing how consumers interact with products or services, and then getting their feedback as to what they like and don’t like, as well as what they would prefer to see—and unlocking the Enjoyment Assets therein—helps companies and creative consultancies design the most satisfying customer experiences.”

This research and discovery phase is so important to E2 that it is not until 50% of the way through their carefully crafted 6-stage process that they even pick up a pen, which, by Robertson’s own admission “scares the living daylights out of some clients, but once we take them through the process they get very excited by it because they have the confidence that the creative solution that we are going to deliver them is based on evidence, as opposed to just ‘here’s 3 ideas just choose whichever one you think is great’”! He continues, “often creative agencies are asked to come up with 3 different options, well we don’t. We come up with one, because it is based on strategy. There is only one solution. There is only one creative environment that is actually going to work for them.”

For any potential naysayers, they sometimes go one step further, taking the solution to market and testing it giving the client confidence that before they even lay a brick, or paint a wall that the solution is going to work for them, ”we can go to the Board and say, not only have we actually tested the idea with your actual customer base, we know it can be done on time, on budget and here is the finalized package. Don’t take our word for it: take your consumer’s word for it” Robertson explains. But it hasn’t always been this easy. It has taken Robertson and Ritchie years of practice to hone the process that they eventually brought into play at E2. Equally, to convince clients that they really need to stop thinking about their brand in a 2-D fashion and start thinking about in which sense/s it has brand recall. Robertson highlights Singapore Airlines as a smart example of brand intelligence “do you know, that every single airhostess at Singapore Airlines wears the same perfume?”

It is an approach that certainly seems to work for E2. For Qantas it’s about investing as much of their $10 million budget into the user end experience, so that employees can touch, see, hear and smell the brand’s customer service excellence. The result? The Qantas Centre of Service Excellence has generated an estimated $1.5 million worth of PR, with featured publications in Australia and overseas. It has set the benchmark for airlines globally in how to excel in customer service, propelling the Qantas brand back to the top. For Commonwealth Bank, it’s about addressing the state of anxiety that many consumers find themselves in when dealing with financial institutions, and alleviating this through considered and intelligent use of space and new ‘open teller’ systems. The result? Since its inception in April 2008 this Sydney Olympic Park branch has doubled the amount of foot traffic expected in a branch of this size and demographic and has been deemed to be the ‘bank of the future’ by the financial service industry.

These are exciting times for E2. Currently, amongst other projects, they are completing the The Australia-Indonesia Facility for Disaster Reduction in Jakarta, for the Australian Government – the first time the Government has allowed a logo without inclusion of their emblem and are down to the last two, as a part of the Multiplex team, for the development at Barangaroo. They will be opening an office in Singapore early 2010, Beijing and Abu Dhabi later in the year and a London office by 2011. This is not to mention, their new venture ‘Place Associates’ specializing in city-branding and place-making, that commenced trading earlier this year.

Perhaps one of the reasons E2 seem to be doing so well in such a short time frame is by knowing what they’re good at – and sticking to it. If they don’t truly believe that what they present to a client is unique and different from other agencies, if they don’t think they are the right fit for a job or that they won’t win a project, they simply won’t go for it – to the point that they’ve found themselves turning down offers of work. Such straight talking has earned them an increasing reputation for excellence in their field, and it is a field in which they seem to have taken ownership. Their work is category defining; no one else seems to be doing what E2 are doing. B&T obviously think the same, awarding them ‘Experiential Agency of the Year’ in 2009. After years of working for someone else and knowing there was much more that could be done, Robertson and Ritchie have stuck their necks out, specialized, and have seen the potential for what it is.

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Sarah King, the curator of the Australian Design Museum Show currently on view at the Shapiro Gallery in Sydney, should be congratulated on her efforts to promote the industry and elevate the profile of many of the talented Australian designers we have here, working largely unsupported by national or state government. However, in my personal opinion, this Show represents exactly what Australian design should not become.

These products should not be held with ‘reverence’ as objects of art, put up on a pedestal,untouchable by most and enjoyed by few. Placing these within a ‘Museum’ and gallery environment elevates the status of such objects to ‘works of art’. As Max Fraser recently wrote, there is a danger of design taking itself too seriously, appearing ‘culturally highbrow. Let’s not forget that it’s only furniture!’.

Sarah King is mistaken in stating that “Design Art, one off or limited edition works by designers is a relatively new phenomenon..and is gaining momentum in Europe”.This is old, old news, this has been going on for over a decade now in Europe. I should know I have lived there for most of my life. The reality is, that actually now the tide seems to be turning and people are resisting this and expressing disatisfaction with the cannonising of designers and their products.

The opportunity here is for Australian design to make a mark of its own, not simply emulate London and Milan. There is the opportunity to take a more democratic approach to the design of our everyday, humble objects and simply make them function better as well as look better, to genuinely innovate, and overall become a society that demands an intelligence of those everyday things that surround us (similar perhaps to how the Swedes and Fins have considered design). This Show, I’m afraid, has severly missed the mark.

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London Calling_AusCreative_Feb-Mar10_pgs26-28_LR

Australians excel in many fields overseas, and design is no different. Hot on the heels of Marc Newson’s (dubious) ‘Supercell’ project, which sat basking in the sunshine on London’s Southbank at the London Design Festival, were Ben Rousseau and Daniel + Emma. Jackie Hawkins gets acquainted.

Exhibiting as part of Designersblock and 100%Futures respectively, at 100%Design in September, Ben Rousseau and Daniel + Emma represented the Aussie contingent admirably and (dare I say it), had something far more interesting to say with their work than their more well reputed counterpart across the river.

Ben Rousseau is the product of an English design education, completing his B.A. in Product and Industrial Design at Middlesex University in North London, but born and bred in Stanwell Tops just outside of Sydney, he is an Aussie at heart. His first break came when he was selected to represent his university at ‘New Designers’ held at the Business Design Centre in Islington, North London and piqued the interest of design curator and critic, Max Fraser. An invitation to display his work at Designers’ Block held in conjunction with 100%Design at the Jam Factory in 2001 followed and after much press interest, Rousseau was asked again to join the team, but this time at the prestigious Milan Furniture Fair in 2002.

Not bad for a kid from the outskirts of Sydney, I suggest, but Rousseau shrugs it off with characteristic nonchalance: “It was kind of cool, but mainly Milan gave me my first real opportunity – a bar for a very cool private client.” This was to be the beginning of a long list of private clients, for whom Rousseau offered a very special bespoke, high-end handmade interiors approach with integrated lighting playing a central role. “People know me as a lighting designer, it became a bit of a niche for me,” Rousseau explains.

It’s a niche market that has made him very popular indeed. He took on a role producing and managing events at Slice PR for clients such as MTV and Destiny’s Child. After only two years, he built up a good enough network base to set up on his own and in 2004 Rousseau Design was born. The last five years has seen Rousseau Design build up an impressive portfolio of work and clients and all achieved through word-of-mouth referrals.

“Slice gave me access to nightclub owners and the like, those that could afford the sort of unusual high-end furniture I was making, and finding the manufacturers that could produce some of the unusual pieces was not something that happened overnight,” he says. “I gradually built-up my contacts, learning from the manufacturing industry as I went along, which meant that the skills I could offer my clients grew at the same time.”

Initial projects included producing stage sets and styling parties for Oakley and MTV’s Lil Jon and working on the European launch of the Xbox 360 where Rousseau created a bespoke gallery displaying customised consoles by 16 international artists, including Jamie Hewlett of the Gorillas.

Based in Acton, West London, a true Aussie enclave, Rousseau has a large workshop and team of around ten. Rising and shrinking in line with the workload, the team consists of skilled members from backgrounds as diverse as carpentry, set building and plumbing. This diversity of offer and flexible can-do attitude is partly what seems to have made Rousseau so popular. Recent projects have included the co-design and install of the new Glade Bar at Sketch, Mayfair alongside Mourad Mazouz and Christian De Falbe, the design and installation of themed rooms at the Ice Hotel in Jukkasjarvi in Arctic Sweden and every boy’s wet dream – the money-no-object interior design of Superbiker Troy Corser’s 40-ft Gulfstream Tourmaster.

But it is Wasted, a project conceived and curated by Arts Co, presented in a tunnel that connects the London underground and the V&A Museum, that has Rousseau the most energized at the moment. In conjunction with recent RCA Architecture graduate Ian Douglas-Jones, a vast architectural seating installation was created, using reclaimed materials that usually would end up in landfill – imported tea sacks and fire hose. This installation turned the ordinary into the extraordinary, recomposed and re-appropriated the tea sacks and hose formed an immersive jewel-like semiprecious environment.

“It really opened up my eyes to the amount of materials that are filling up the ground, there is only nine years left of landfill in the United Kingdom,” Rousseau explains. “Some of it is rubbish and you cannot do anything with it, but some of it, with a bit of imagination, could really create something.” He’s put his money where is mouth is too, setting up a new company called Wasted Design, to explore the idea of turning other reclaimed materials in to new products. “Conveyor belt off-cuts are super strong and perfect for garden furniture! I have stacks of ideas and it’s an area I am very excited by.” Watch this space.

I wonder, with all his enthusiasm for progressive manufacturing, whether we will see him on Australian shores again. “Yeah, I’m itching to come back, I would love to have a practice back in Australia. I’m aiming to come back within the next five years,” he says, but at the same time laments the inconvenience that this would cause: “London is, for me, the centre of everything, it is an international hub, and the manufacturing base in Europe is so close.” So, living back in Australia is really a lifestyle choice for Rousseau.

For Daniel + Emma though, it couldn’t be more different and living in Adelaide is a conscious decision to get away from the hustle of the biggest, brightest and the best, so they are ‘free’ to design unhindered by expectation and the fierce competition that London engenders. “In some respects it gives us a bit of an edge,” says Emma, one half of this young married couple. “You are not seeing the newest and greatest thing that so-and-so is creating. You are creating originality, because you are removed from it.”

Daniel + Emma are relatively new to the design scene but in their short years since graduation from the University of South Australia, Emma has won the Qantas Spirit of Youth Awards and awarded an internship with Marc Newson in Paris, while Daniel worked at Committee, the studio in Deptford in Southeast London famed for its quirky Kebab lamps. Helped along by a grant from the Government of South Australia, Daniel + Emma have exhibited at 100%Design Tokyo and 100%Design in London in 2008, with their range ‘Shapes’ and last year with their collection ‘SOLID’.

Taking pleasure in ordinary everyday things ‘SOLID’ has made the humble object, be it torch, wall clock or pencil box, remain humble, yet with better lines and subtlety of texture and colour. Designed to appeal to a broader spectrum of people than just your usual design-savvy types, Daniel + Emma delight in the less showy aspects of design, resisting the trend to dramatize and embellish what can be left simple and uncomplicated. Daniel + Emma are not out to change the world, they are here to make the objects around us a little more refined, considered and thoughtful.

Moving overseas, even for just a short while, was as with Rousseau, always an eventuality for them. “Our degree was very engineering focused and you were expected to go on and work for a large company and pack off your products to get mass manufactured in China, Daniel and I weren’t interested in that. We wanted to break away and be more independent designer-makers,” says Emma. “Working in London gave us that experience and helped us realise not just how to design in that way, but how to make a business out of it.” Along with the new skills learnt in London, came excellent contacts. Retailers and distributors have expressed interest in SOLID and manufacturing is due to commence early 2010, and in Australia if Emma has her way.

Remaining in Adelaide for the foreseeable future but for forays to Sydney in February to take part in the Australian Design Museum Show at the Shapiro Gallery and Melbourne to show off new work at SPACE furniture, Daniel + Emma like to keep it that way. Working in a Mental Health organization by day for Emma, a lighting shop for Daniel, they made a conscious decision not to work in a design/engineering environment. “To go there everyday would be draining and demanding and makes doing your own design work so much harder,” says Daniel. “This way, we come home and sit down to design and it makes it all the more enjoyable.”

Don’t be mistaken for thinking them luddite however, they don’t design in a bubble and are regularly in touch with what’s going on in the greater outside design world, they just choose not to be conventionally immersed in it. Shortlisted for the Bombay Sapphire Design Discovery Award in 2009 and with a new collection for 100%Design in London and Tokyo in 2010, they seem to be rather successful at it.

>>Australian Design Museum Show at the Shapiro Gallery, Sydney,
24 Feb – 7 March
>>SPACE furniture, Melbourne, April, www.spacefurniture.com.au

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There is the weird, and there is the wonderful…

‘The Big Drink’

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