What a Designer’s Workbench Tells You That Their Portfolio Never Will
The Japan Design Committee’s ‘Designers and Tools 2026’ puts the personal working kits of 19 designers on display at Matsuya Ginza — including Sato Taku, Hara Kenya, and Kengo Kuma. Open until 8 June 2026.
Brutalist Australia: The Architecture and Graphic Design of the 1960s–70s
How Australian brutalist architecture and its associated graphic design shaped civic visual identity in the 1960s and 70s.
Mambo, Reg Mombassa, and the 1980s–90s Australian Pop Visual Language
How Mambo and Reg Mombassa created Australia’s first globally recognisable pop visual identity — and what the design industry learned from it.
Australian Typography: From Letterpress Heritage to Type Design Today
A guide to Australian typography — from colonial letterpress and mid-century signwriting to the contemporary type foundries shaping Australian visual identity.
The Sydney vs Melbourne Design Schools: A Cultural Comparison
How do Sydney and Melbourne’s design cultures differ? An editorial comparison of visual sensibility, studio culture, education, and graphic design identity.
What Makes Australian Design Distinctive? Landscape, Light, and the Antipodean Eye
What makes Australian design recognisably Australian? An editorial argument about landscape, light, isolation, and the Antipodean eye.
A History of Australian Graphic Design: From Bauhaus Émigrés to Digital Practice
A history of Australian graphic design, from the Bauhaus émigrés of the 1930s through Mambo and the brutalist civic identities to contemporary digital practice.
From Wagenfeld to the Present — The Quiet Shift in Contemporary Lighting Design
From the Bauhaus lamp to Ingo Maurer to today’s modular systems, how contemporary lighting design is replacing flat uniformity with material narrative and atmosphere.
In Search of True Realism – Moriyama Daido and The Psychology of Post-War Japan
Moriyama’s images—grainy, blurred, violently contrasted—seemed to vibrate with an energy I recognised from walking Tokyo’s streets at night, but in black and white: the neon bleeding into puddles, the compression of bodies in train carriages, the dystopian signages stacked up on thin high buildings in Kabukicho.
Grunge Design Returns Distressed and Deliberate
Torn edges, scratched surfaces, typography that looks photocopied fifty times. The aesthetic came from 1990s Seattle music posters – Nirvana, Pearl Jam, underground clubs where lo-fi wasn’t a choice but necessity. Cheap photocopiers, limited budgets, DIY production.