D.Cast

Charging the forefront of innovative and passionate New Zealand-made design is Rosedale based design company, Blender. Blender occupies an inclusive design consultancy, strategy, and manufacturing platform in a cultivating and nurturing social work culture. That of which points to the efforts of their experienced design team and their founding core.

Product designer Oliver McDermott accounts for a large portion of that core, where his consultancy and design process work accounts for Blender’s heavy pursuit of design excellence. An insightful chat with the DINZ Student Council members opened a vast safe of knowledge regarding Oliver’s past experiences and design inspirations, as well as dabbling into that kiwi “can-do” attitude. A conversation that extracts and magnifies the most critical turning points in a young designer’s career.

Jonny who is a Director, Motion Designer and Creative Director has a wide range of work that spans motion, film, animation, design, interactive, and visual effects. He has worked with many international and local clients who are household names. Alistair and Rose learn the ins and outs of some of these projects, asking Jonny about his creative processes and attitude towards new challenges. They discuss the motion design industry in New Zealand and how its relatively small scale allows people to collaborate and experiment on new projects, in doing so pushing the boundaries of moving image.

How does design drive value?

Across so many things it does/we do;

• Identity
• Culture
• Product
• Experience

How do we grow business?

What is the impact of the work we do?

Design can help make a step change in sales and profits, culture and behaviour change, or opening up completely new businesses, products and markets.

Why so broad?

Fundamentally it’s about the future, designing what’s next, what could be.

Imagining, visioning, rehearsing and building a whole new thing, an improvement, a new future. Which is why it’s such an important creator of value.

How can we get clients to understand this?

Often they just see design as the end of the process or at worst ‘the colouring in department’

Sell in / curate a vision at the beginning of the process, work with them.

Get them to tell you what the ideal outcome of the process would be - is it new sales, more loyal customers, new markets - what would it look like if we did this. Design makes things visible, tangible, help them imagine this future together.

How would the business be different? How would we help peoples lives? What would the revenue or profit impact be? The cultural impact?

If we understand the size of the impact then that should help sell in a more robust and bold design led process.

Once it is imagined and envisioned – then go about designing the build together.

What are the risks?

Not connecting with clients, someone else has the same solution or the client / culture is not ready / able to drive the solution. Execution hit or miss.

Design at is best is enduring, it should be an investment designed to last for a long time. It needs customer research, competitor exploration, exploration, iteration and permission to play with options.

Finally – sorry, soapbox moment - we need to think about the responsibility of design, of a designed outcome to make things better. It’s about a purpose or intent to be better and a commitment to use design broadly to get better.

Holistic improvement is better, else it’s just one way – profiting – at the expense of someone or some thing and that kind of thinking is fundamentally challenged in this day and age.

The rise of the circular economy and 3 horizon thinking. These are all critical factors in the futures we should be imagining – the organisations who use design well, the people we help, the voices we elevate and support.

Established in 2010, Think Packaging is an award-winning structural packaging design studio that’s pure focus is cardboard engineering and delivering solutions. Mat’s talent has shone through his work, and with a long list of awards and well-known clientele, it’s no secret Mat is greatly succeeding as a packaging designer. Joel and Clara chatted to Mat about where it all started, how he developed his skills and knowledge along the way, and what it takes to start and run a business from scratch.

Andy Florkowski speaks with Nick Mowbray, CEO of Zuru Toys, and investor in up and coming kiwi FMCG brands such as Monday Haircare, Dose&Co, Nood Petfood and Rascal & Friends. Nick moved to China as a teenager, with a small loan from his parents and with the goal of launching a toy business. 15 Years later, Zuru is one of the largest toy empires in the world, and Nick is drawing on this experience to shape and propel other New Zealand businesses onto the global stage.

Milliken-Ontera is a design-focused commercial flooring manufacturer headquartered in Sydney. With a strong ethical culture and long-held commitments to sustainability, they are creating a better future by actively participating in local communities, developing a diverse and inclusive workplace, and doing their part to ensure a cleaner world for generations to come.

Oliver McDermott talks to Ania Cetinic (Communications Manager) & James Mfula (Design Director) at Milliken-Ontera about flooring design, culture, values, and shrinking footprints.

Like other difficult dinner conversation topics such as politics and religion, the question around the value of design can be viewed very differently depending on where you sit. Independent designer Bevan Tonks along with Jono Sagar, principle and founder of Voice discuss the value of design from their own perspectives as well as how they see design as a problem solving exercise becoming increasingly complex.

Rose Norgrove, Alistair Kincaid talk to Demelza Round, Nathan Walker and Anjuli Selvadurai. Project Make is a design education community that encourages folk in Aotearoa to make things together. Made up of founder Demelza Round, Online Learning Coordinator Anjuli Selvadurai and Creative Director Nathan Walker. Their online platform presents educational opportunities through project-based lessons. These projects span across multiple art and design disciplines and cater to makers of any age and stage. The team at Project Make saw a major gap in education that speaks directly and inclusively to art and design practices in Aotearoa. They aim to change that by inviting and sharing a diverse range of perspectives and skills to build their projects. Whilst always placing designerly thinking at the forefront.

In this episode, Oliver McDermott talks to Brand Guy, Richard Shirtcliffe, about building disruptive ‘triple bottom line’ consumer lifestyle brands, finding unmet needs, and outside the box thinking. Richard is the Co CEO of Noho, a direct to consumer furniture brand making beautiful dynamic furniture from waste plastic and sustainable materials. Noho, based in Colorado, has just launched it's first product, the extraordinary noho move chair. Created in New Zealand by sister company Formway, it is made from up-cycled waste plastic like discarded fishing nets and end-of-life carpet, and is designed to bring dynamic ergonomic comfort into the family home. Prior to noho, Richard was CEO of Coffee Supreme International, and Tuatara Brewing before that. Over his career he has been involved with several successful growth NZ companies, such as Phil&teds, Mountain Buggy, Prorack, Ice Breaker and Method Recycling to name a few.

Jungie Choi takes us through the design journey and process that led up to 2019 Student Graphics Gold Pin winning project, Han. Through the podcast AUT students Kai Concepcion and Harry Davis have a conversation with AUT graduate Jungie about student life, her creative journey from being a student to a working professional. Jungie sheds light on the challenges she has faced and significant turning points that narrated her design journey. Opening up about the importance of minority voices not only to rejoice the positives of their culture but also exposing the “negative” ideologies in a culture through design to spark conversations. Sharing insightful advice and experience to young emerging designers.