Successful design outcomes and customer-focused design, is championed at a recent design conference.
Foundry recently curated a wonderful mix of inspirational graphic design professionals in Launceston, Tasmania.
Mirella Marie reminded us that design, projects (and life in general) are all about the journey and not the destination. Mirella runs a brand design studio in Melbourne called Vertigo and is also the proud founder of Womentor – a mentorship program for women in graphic design, that went international last year with 21 amazing female mentors.
Paul Mosig (and his wife Rachel Peachey) had imposter syndrome for much of their early careers, with 
no formal graphic design education – instead, ‘media art’. They’ve managed to achieve a balance between art and a successful commercial design practice through their studio Racket in the Blue Mountains, NSW.
Paul and Rachel have a philosophy for life that I can empathise with – I admire their environmentally-friendly focus for our planet, and also their decision to keep a their graphic design studio ‘small’ (rather than growing it into a large entity), so they could maintain a healthy work-life balance, continue to travel, and purse art and further education.
Ali Kerr was magnetic to watch. Her expertise is in experience design, i.e. the space between technology and people. Her advise was to bring your whole self to any project and ‘trust the process’, while always keeping your focus on human-centred design.
Alli created a beautiful graphic to mark the process of the following:
- Discover and define the problem
- Define and develop the design brief
- Develop and deliver the solution
- And repeat…
Our last speaker was Matthew Haynes, the founder of The Design Conference in Brisbane each year, and an all round hilarious guy. Matt’s advice was that in order to be truly alive, one must create. He was very much focussed on what we can (and cannot) control, in order to retain a normal mental health balance. His advise was to fix your own mind, so you could achieve anything you dream of (Matt used a different vocabulary for this advise).
I always try to put myself in the shoes of our clients’ customers, and Matt concurred with this philosophy too. Sometimes a good conference reaffirms what we already know, and brings it top of mind.
Overall, a fabulous event run by Foundry, and we all look forward to the next one…
