Feature by Freya Lombardo

WHERE IMAGINATION MEETS INGENUITY: THE SUCCESS STORY BEHIND-THE-SCENES AT BLACKMAGIC DESIGN

You’ve seen Ninja Kidz latest video Dinosaurs Take Over Our HOUSE, yes? The one with mad action scenes full of 12 foot long dinosaurs and live snakes! This latest effects-laden upload from the global YouTube sensations rocketed to nearly 11 million views within weeks, adding to the billions of views across the mini-movies on their channel.  

Director and producer Matt Oliveira chose Blackmagic Design’s Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro to shoot the footage of Ninja Kidz dad Shane Myler and his four children Bryton, Ashton, Paxton, and Payton (all aged between 10 and 16) tackling prehistoric beasts with their trademark black-belt moves and stunts.  

When asked why the Pocket 6K Pro was a perfect camera for this shoot, Oliveira was quick with an enthusiastic response. “I absolutely love the colors and the dynamic range that these cameras are capable of reaching. And even though we had it rigged almost like a full cinema camera, the size and the lightweight of the whole rig allowed us to move much faster with a small crew and know that we were capturing a cinematic picture.”

Transferring the footage directly into Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve Studio allowed Oliveira’s editor to complete colour grading – a process Blackmagic design has streamlined and simplified. “I love how easy the post-production is when working with Blackmagic cameras,” says Oliveira. “No matter what I shoot in, it’s always a delightful process in post. The flexibility to push the image is incredible and the simplicity to color Pocket Cinema Camera 6k files is a lifesaver.”

Whether it’s shooting and editing YouTube videos, small screen gems or Hollywood blockbusters, the film and television professionals using Blackmagic’s products and solutions to create movie magic echo Oliveira’s sentiments, singing their praises in chorus. Not only do they appreciate the hardware for flexibility and image quality, they are grateful for the seamless interface between production and post-production platforms like DaVinci Resolve and Fusion that are fast and deeply intuitive, which saves precious time and resources.

For over 35 years, Blackmagic Design has created the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, live production switchers and real-time film scanners for the feature film, post-production and television broadcast industries. Their products have been used to produce a multitude of feature films, including Rocketman, Avengers Infinity War, Deadpool, Jurassic World, Captain Marvel, as well as major television shows including Ozark, Game of Thrones, American Horror Story and The Big Bang Theory.

In that time, Blackmagic Design’s products have received over 50 Australian Good Design Awards (!!) – and countless international awards – attesting to the quality and innovation of their industry-leading solutions. Each award is a testament to the vision of the company and more so to the team behind the scenes who collaborate to bring products of uncompromising excellence from ideation to market domination.

As one of its highest honours, Good Design Australia has presented Blackmagic Design with the prestigious 2021 Australian Good Design Team of the Year Award.

CEO of Good Design Australia, Dr Brandon Gien commended the Blackmagic Design Team on receiving the Award, “Everything Blackmagic Design does, from the innovative products they design, their approach to service design, digital design, engineering design and experience design is meticulously considered and executed from the user’s perspective. They are the quintessential Australian success story and design is not only in their name, it’s embedded deep into their DNA. We need more design-led businesses in Australia like this who are setting the global benchmark for others to follow. I’m thrilled they’ve been recognised with this honour.”

In a conversation with Blackmagic Design’s Director of Product Design and Engineering, Simon Kidd shares his insights on what drives his team to creative excellence and how he and the team have shaped a collaborative design-led culture. What emerges is a picture of technical prowess and invention that is constantly evolving, all in reverent service of film and television practitioners who push creativity to greater heights by coupling imagination with Blackmagic’s ingenuity. It is a craft that is rewarded by absolute brand loyalty amongst an ever-growing pool of practitioners. 

GDA: Congratulations again, Simon. Over 35 years, Blackmagic Design has won more than 50 Australian Good Design Awards – and numerous international awards – for product excellence and innovation. This doesn’t happen by accident. It’s driven by commitment and collaboration between teams.

The 2021 Good Design Team of the Year puts you and your colleagues deservedly in the spotlight. What attracts designers and other specialists to Blackmagic Design in the first place?

SK: Blackmagic Design is a special place where people get to work on some of the most progressive, exciting and innovative technology developments in Australia – if not the world. Designers are drawn to our design-led culture and the opportunity to play a critical role in the creation of these industry changing products.

GDA: How have you built your dream team and what talents does it comprise?

SK: Over the last 14 years under our CEO Grant Petty’s direction we’ve built an in-house industrial design capability of more than 70 designers from scratch. Starting small, enabled us to grow the team and build our own expertise in-house. We also had the freedom to develop systems, processes, and design philosophies that were specifically tailored to suit the needs of the rapidly expanding and evolving business. Today the team spans the globe with offices in Melbourne, Hong Kong, China, Amsterdam and the UK.

We like to bring ‘T’ shaped people into our team. People who have a core strength, such as Industrial Design, but who also show a deep empathy and understanding of other related functions such as user interaction, engineering, manufacturing and even quality control. This makes them incredible designers because they understand, at a very early stage in the design process, the impact that every decision has on the final product.

GDA: How do you engender a commitment to innovation, quality and improving the user experience of your products across your team? Can you give us an end-to-end example?

SK: We have a strong product focus, the entire team is committed to delivering the absolute best product we can for the customer. It really is a relentless pursuit to make the product the ‘absolute best’. To do this we’ve integrated design into every part of the product development process and designers play a critical role in the product’s creation.

Many businesses fail to unlock the full potential that designers can bring to their product development processes. Instead, their role is often quarantined to styling around pre-determined packages of technology. I’m a firm believer that designers have a great deal more to offer. At Blackmagic Design, Grant Petty our CEO has given the design team a voice from the outset. This enables us to leverage the real value designers bring to the table. They are involved from the initial idea, through the early stages of a product’s evolution, right through to mass production.

GDA: Can you tell us a bit about the culture at Blackmagic? What makes it a unique place to work?

SK: The Blackmagic Design team has a collaborative design-led culture. We have a tight-knit team that has worked together for a long time. We bounce ideas off each other to quickly solve problems and come up with the best solution. The process is fluid and we move fast.

Uniquely, we’ve developed some key pieces of intellectual property around the ‘process’ of Industrial Design; this has enabled us to drive product development cycles with far greater speed and efficiency than many other brands in the space. This speed has allowed us to be first to market with many new technologies, in well-designed high-quality products, and this has been rewarded with loyal customers who really appreciate what we do.

GDA: How has your team adapted through the pandemic while keeping to the roadmap and ensuring excellence during this challenging time?

SK: The team has done an incredible job and they are to be commended on their superhuman efforts over the last two years! Perhaps winning this Award during COVID-19 is even more significant than other years as it proves that our design process can hold up and continue to deliver a pipeline of products despite a global pandemic.

There was unprecedented demand for our products during the global COVID-19 lockdown. Our products helped many consumers, institutions and even mainstream media react quickly to the crisis. Medical facilities, universities and schools used a wide range of Blackmagic Design products to facilitate safe, ongoing education, including the broadcasting of surgical procedures and lectures to off-campus students.

From a design point of view, our approach focused on the simplification of professional broadcast technology to make it accessible to a new and inexperienced user group. This meant rationalising products to their core functions, simplifying their use and reducing cost to improve affordability.

GDA: What inspires your team/team members?

SK: We’re inspired by the creative people who use our products. I think there is a privilege in creating for a creative industry – they appreciate the effort. Prior to Blackmagic, the industry was dominated by bland utilitarian design that was forced on users in overly expensive and complicated products. We’ve changed that.

Our end users are highly creative, and often highly technically skilled people. There are similarities with Industrial Designers. We want them to enjoy using their products and appreciate the thought we’ve put in – much the same as we do.

GDA: What does it mean to the team to see Blackmagic’s products and solutions used to shape popular and critically acclaimed feature films and television shows/series?

SK: There is a real sense of pride when you see creative people using the products that we design to fulfill their own creative vision. Whether they be an Independent Videographer or Cinematographer on a Hollywood feature film, you always feel inspired by their work.

Blackmagic Design products have been used on countless Hollywood movies including many Oscar^TM award-winning productions. When you design the tools that are used to make these movies, you get a deep understanding of the effort and hard work that goes into creating a motion picture. It’s a collaboration of a large creative and technical team working under intense pressure toward a common goal. Interestingly, it’s like designing a product. People just see the outcome, but when you understand the process that was required to get there, you have a greater appreciation of the end result. So, it’s very hard not to ‘appreciate’ a lot of the films you watch.

GDA: Can you tell us how you foster an atmosphere of innovation? How are ideas conceptualised, socialised, iterated, tested and proven?

SK: We make products for a highly technical, professional industry so understandably our customers have very high demands. Not only do our products need to be well designed, of great quality and be very reliable, they need to specifically cater for the user’s workflow. To achieve this, we spend a great deal of time studying the way they work and the environments they operate in.

If you take designing a camera for example, this is an incredibly complex process and it takes a significant amount of refinement, prototyping and testing to put together a really great product. You need to understand the exact requirements of the user and design quite precisely around these.

Ergonomics and balance need to be spot on, controls – buttons, dials and keys – need to be in exactly the right position and the user interface needs to be a seamless part of the design. These are professional tools and their use becomes almost innate for many operators so the human-machine interface is critical, the camera almost becomes an extension of themselves.

GDA: How do you celebrate a win? In general, and particularly with this one?

SK: We consider the Australian Good Design Team of the Year Award to be the one of highest accolades in professional design – so the first thing we’ll do is congratulate the entire Blackmagic Design Team on this significant achievement!

It will be disappointing not to celebrate the win at the annual Good Design Award Ceremony in Sydney – over the years it’s been one of the highlights of our calendar! Nonetheless, I’m sure once things get back to normal in Melbourne we’ll find an inspiring way to celebrate this incredible win!

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Visit Blackmagic Design website here.

Feature by Freya Lombardo

This year, Good Design Australia has honoured the dynamic duo of Ros and John Moriarty – founders of Balarinji – with the prestigious Australian Design Prize.

This special accolade was established to recognise individual designers who are making or have made, a significant impact in Australian design over the course of their careers. Few designers have made such an enormous contribution to Australian design as Ros and John Moriarty.

Since 1983, their Aboriginal-owned and founded design and strategy agency Balarinji has honoured culture, community and Country with its award-winning design products, projects and campaigns.

From their Qantas Flying Art Aircraft series to the Townsville Jezzine Barracks Redevelopment, The Burwood Brickwoods public art installation to the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games uniforms, their iconic work speaks with an authentic voice, resonates with power and passion, and is designed to deepen understanding and respect for Aboriginal Australia and Indigenous design.

According to CEO of Good Design Australia Dr Brandon Gien, “Ros and John are national design treasures and I am deeply honoured that we are able to recognise their life’s work with the Australian Design Prize. It was a highlight of my career to share this news with them. Looking at their vast body of work over the years makes me even more proud to call myself an Australian designer.”

In this conversation with co-founder and Managing Director of Balarinji, Ros Moriarty shares powerful insights destined to inspire the design community, enterprise and governments to lean in, learn and participate.

Ros and John’s unwavering commitment to rich cross-cultural exchange enlivens an ongoing dialogue that fosters deeper understanding and appreciation of Indigenous history, culture, community and Country.

There is no doubt that Ros and John are in a unique position to reflect on what shapes an Australian design identity – one suffused with 60,000+ years of continuous history that reaches toward a mutually inclusive future.

“Balarinji’s engagement with Aboriginal people, culture, art, stories and identity through design is their legacy, and we hope this lives on for centuries to come,” says Dr. Gien.

GDA: Ros, huge congratulations to you, John and the Balarinji team for this richly deserved Award.

You’ve mentioned Balarinji’s story begins with John’s birth to a Yanyuwa mother and Irish father in Borroloola in the remote Gulf of Carpentaria, NT and, because his skin was paler than his mother’s he was taken from her at the age of four under the infamous assimilationist policies we know as the Stolen Generations.

How has this initial traumatic displacement, the subsequent reunion then separation, and John later being reunited with his family, culture and Country informed his ethos and resilience? 

RM: John’s early history was a driver of his fight for Aboriginal rights, pushing for citizenship for Aboriginal Australians in the 1967 Referendum and taking up a career in the Public Service in the 1970s to impact an Aboriginal voice to government.

He held several executive positions in Federal and State Departments of Aboriginal Affairs in Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide, with a focus on advocacy for Aboriginal equality, reconciliation and cultural engagement. His ethos has been around transformational change for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. 

His early displacement also heightened his desire to keep our family connected to culture and Country. And from there, to look outwards to foster an environment of respect and collaboration where Indigenous and non-Indigenous people can work together towards a new statement about Australian identity. 

GDA: What brought you two together? 

RM: I was a researcher and John was a senior bureaucrat when we met in Canberra in the late 70s at the Department of Aboriginal Affairs. John was from the far north of the NT, I was from Tasmania. We found each other midway between the two.  

GDA: And when did you know that you wanted to start a design practice together? What was important to you at that time?

RM: In early 1983, when Melbourne was home, John created long neck turtle images which I screen-printed onto a doona cover for our first son, Tim Bundyan. We wanted him to feel close to our Yanyuwa family in the Gulf of Carpentaria more than 4,000 kilometers away. From this simple expression – eventually – came our design studio, Balarinji – it’s the Yanyuwa skin name of our sons Tim and James Djawarralwarral.

The vision was to celebrate the heritage and identity of our sons and our daughter Julia Marrayelu. We began to realise over time that our family’s personal identity journey could resonate with Australia’s broader search for a unique belonging in the world.  

Early on, opportunities for Indigenous design were non-existent. We started by creating a range of printed cotton, silk and wool fabrics which were launched at a glamorous event by The Australian Wool Corporation in 1983. I hope Balarinji influenced the future wave of Aboriginal textile artists who would follow.

GDA: You established your practice under the skin name of your sons, Balarinji, which denotes an orientation to land, relationships and belonging. How is this relationship with culture and Country expressed through your work, and how can it be shared with those who don’t have insights or innate understanding?

RM: Our work is an authentic response to Place and Country that is informed by local Aboriginal knowledge holders, storytellers and creative practitioners. Design is a powerful visual language that can reveal universal understandings that spark curiosity and bridge cultural divides.  

Australia’s foundational Aboriginal narrative offers an original frame of thinking that has largely been missing from Australian design, particularly in terms of our public places. It comes from a different worldview that is layered, complex and holistic. Aboriginal society, sustainability and ways of connecting with Country are a distinctive and rich heritage that all of us can acknowledge, and be inspired by, as Australians. 

There is much for everyone to learn from the deep, interconnected relationship Aboriginal people have with the physical and spiritual elements of Country. It is about belonging, where language, culture, knowledge, Dreaming, Law, and Ceremony are interdependent and one with Country. 

GDA: A pivotal moment for Balarinji came with the partnership with Qantas, painting a fleet of their jumbo jets with paintings by Aboriginal artists, making these the world’s largest pieces of moveable Aboriginal art. How did this watershed project come about? And what did it take to get Qantas interested in the proposition? 

RM: I dreamt of painting a Qantas aircraft with Aboriginal art – quite literally. I woke up at 2am one morning in 1993 with the idea. John and I wanted Aboriginal culture to matter to one of Australia’s biggest brands on the global stage. Because we thought it would then matter to Australians and to the world.   

However, turning the idea into reality wasn’t easy. It took 18 months of lobbying and an impromptu pitch to then CEO, James Strong, when we found ourselves in a lift at a hotel with him, to literally get the project off the ground and launch Wunala Dreaming in 1994.

Wunala was intended to be a three-month promotion, but the joy and recognition the aircraft inspired kept her in the sky, including a repaint, for 17 years. It was euphoric for us to see her fly. Our nation that had taken John away from his family as a Stolen Generations child when he was four years old, was now heralding his culture all around the country and the globe in an indelibly visible and public way.  

GDA: How has the project been sustained over more than twenty years? How has it evolved?

RM: Wunala Dreaming was followed by four other Qantas-Balarinji Flying Art aircraft – Nalanji Dreaming (1995), Yananyi Dreaming (2002) with the art of Rene Kulitja, Mendoowoorrji (2013) with Paddy Bedford, and Emily Kame Kngwarreye (2018), named for the artist. Balarinji also designed the textile of Qantas’ longest-running uniform. Called ‘Wirriyarra’, it means ‘My Spirit Home’ in Yanyuwa.

The aircraft are also a statement of Qantas’ commitment to reconciliation, it is one of the first corporations in Australia to contribute to reconciliation and is a founding member of the national procurement agency Supply Nation. Balarinji assisted Qantas in launching its first Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) in 2007 and also assisted in designing its 2015-2018 RAP. 

GDA: What does it represent in terms of visibility of Indigenous culture to all Australians and on the world stage? 

RM: The Qantas-Balarinji Art Aircraft have become a powerful acknowledgment and celebration of Australian identity on the global stage. They are a great example of how Indigenous design can influence how we think about ourselves as Australians and how we can draw from the strength, integrity and beauty of Aboriginal culture.

Is there a symmetry between representations of Country made by artists who often envision Country from a birds-eye / spiritual perspective and having those artistic expressions flown in the sky? Tell me what that means to you.

We have always felt a beautiful lyricism in representing Aboriginal art on a flying canvas. It responds to the way so many Aboriginal artists depict a bird’s eye view of Country. It encapsulates an astonishing originality in how Aboriginal people see and depict their world. It is fundamentally different to a Western world view. And incredibly, the spiritual beauty of Aboriginal traditions have nurtured the place that we now share as contemporary Australians, for tens of thousands of years before us.  

When did Balarinji evolve from a design practice to a design agency? And what shift did that require of you both as directors? 

Balarinji has evolved significantly over its almost 40-year history. From starting in textiles, fashion, and homewares, then adding graphic design, public art and landmark projects for large government and private organisations nationally and internationally, we have had to reinvent ourselves many times. 

We now focus our efforts on significant brand and identity campaigns, and deeply embedded responses to the built environment and major infrastructure. The Aboriginal narrative is largely missing from Australia’s public places and buildings. It is still more common to see Aboriginal elements integrated into precincts of art installations or in Aboriginal-influenced landscape design than in built form. 

Sometimes moving the studio forward has been about responding to changes in the market. Sometimes we have helped drive those market changes in line with the evolution of our design vision and engagement methodologies. One way we have driven change is through developing a co-design framework of Aboriginal engagement local to Place. The process brings together local Aboriginal creative practitioners and communities for authentic storytelling, interpretation, and legacy. Balarinji’s team of envisioners, designers, project managers and business developers work with urban planners, architects and landscape architects to activate the Aboriginal voice in significant projects.

As directors, we have had to be comfortable with risk, particularly financial risk in staying the distance to break through the barriers of blazing a trail when we often felt very far ahead of our time. Not necessarily being ahead in a self-congratulatory way, more around the insecurity of building new paradigms that challenged the deeply ingrained status quo that was very difficult to shift. We began as a philosophy, staying with the joy of the vision has guided us through. 

 At the heart of your business is a philosophy of ‘the spirituality behind the design’. As John says, ‘This is something that all Australians … can relate to, so they can understand this country and feel more part of it’. How have you seen this play out in practice?

The positive reactions our teams receive to our work never cease to humble and inspire us, whether the project is about a country, a city, a community or even a building. The connectedness to Place that drives our work provides a richness and grounds our practice in a uniquely Australian place in the world. 

Many people feel a special connection with Wunala Dreaming as the first of our aircraft, as they do with our latest, which depicts the superb artistic mastery of Emily Kame Kngwarreye. It’s the same with many of our public art and infrastructure projects. 

As a nation we’ve only just started to realise the richness and beauty of Aboriginal culture. It’s early days in seeing Aboriginal stories in public view. We have hardly touched the tip of the iceberg. Imagery, story, philosophy, intellectual framing, language – the incredible sources of inspiration are both an opportunity and a responsibility. The responsibility lies in bringing Aboriginal people who are local to Place to the centre of the co-design process.   

There must be so many stories that need to be told – and made all the more powerful through your advocacy and visual communication. How do you determine which projects to pursue? 

Our number one rule is shared values. Our team is keenly aware of the ethical obligation to respect the power of Aboriginal content and participation. We seek out projects where clients have a commitment to be authentic and aware. We are also interested in social and cultural impact, we are a studio for purpose. And we always chase excellence – aesthetically, process-wise and in the commercial and community relationships we build. Ensuring market-rate returns to all the Aboriginal participants in our projects is central to our model.     

Can you share your topline methodology?  

For Balarinji, our goal is to build a bridge between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians and deepen the understanding of Aboriginal Australia through national and international projects. We really want to see more Australian organisations embrace and celebrate our foundational Indigenous narrative.

The methodology our team delivers helps shift the way Indigenous artists and knowledge holders are engaged. Balarinji is the vanguard of a co-design methodology that is based on deeper collaboration with Indigenous stakeholders and community-endorsed creative practitioners local to Place. It allows us to activate authentic voices to draw out knowledge, protocols, history, culture and the contemporary stories of Aboriginal communities, for co-designed interpretation from the beginning to the end of projects. 

This is a co-design process with Aboriginal stakeholders as well as knowledge holders, artists and other creative practitioners. This is not a case of the client’s design team interpreting Indigenous knowledge. Rather, it is about the design team working with Balarinji and the artists and knowledge holders to activate the authentic Indigenous narrative, protocols and principles to inform the design process from project inception to final delivery for a particular site. The outcomes are immeasurably richer for everyone. 

Much of our success comes from the studio’s structure. It is not only a question of design, but also the quality of our project managers, community coordinators, historians, researchers, business relationship leaders, writers, HR and PR specialists, as well as a commitment to hiring and developing in-house Aboriginal staff. The passion for change runs through our entire team.  

Beyond the Qantas partnership, of which 3-5 projects are you most proud? And why? 

1- The Australian uniforms for the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games, this was the first Olympic team to wear Aboriginal-themed uniforms. Working with the athletes, Balarinji created a design that expressed energy and strength through the power of diversity. Seeing our textile design beamed up onto the sails of the Sydney Opera House at the moment the athletes were entering the stadium in Rio fulfilled a career-long dream to adorn THOSE sails.  

2 – Our work with Transport for NSW (TfNSW) – we’ve worked on several major projects with TfNSW, mostly recently Sydney’s new M12 motorway which has been one of our first major infrastructure projects to embed the local Indigenous narrative throughout the entire design process. Other TfNSW projects include the Pacific Highway upgrade, Redfern Station redevelopment and the design of TfNSW’s RAP. These large long-lead infrastructure projects demonstrate how skilled our team is, how connected and committed to Aboriginal community benefits, and what compelling design outcomes are possible when the local Aboriginal community is brought to the table in true co-design.  

3 – Our work with the Moriarty Foundation which enables Aboriginal families and communities to unlock the potential of their children. Our design-led thinking underpins our two interrelated initiatives that are helping redress Indigenous social disparity. John Moriarty Football (JMF), Australia’s longest-running and most successful Indigenous football program for 2-18 year olds. JMF’s transformational skills program uses football for talent and positive change and has a track record of improving school attendance and achieving resilient, healthier outcomes for some of Australia’s most remote Indigenous communities.

4 – Indi Kindi, a ground-breaking early years solution for children under five in remote Aboriginal communities, integrating health, wellbeing, education and development to give children the best start in life.

5 – The Burwood Brickworks ceiling mural by Wurundjeri, Dja Dja wurrung and Ngurai illum wurrung artist, Mandy Nicholson, which won a 2020 Australian Good Design Award. This was a special project that was deeply embedded to Place and reflected the local Wurundjeri culture. This project is a stunning example of how Aboriginal culture can exist in an urban context in a way that is dynamic and alive. The client, Frasers Property Australia, was on board from the onset to bring bold visibility to Mandy’s art and Wurundjeri culture.

What do you love about linking art, design and place? Why should that resonate with Australians and visitors to our shores? 

Working in visual imagery is inspiring, uplifting and energising. Art, design and Place are three parts of a satisfying creative whole. It is another level to underpin it all with the deep, interconnected relationships Aboriginal people have with the physical and spiritual elements of Country. It is about belonging, where language, culture, knowledge, Dreaming, Law, and Ceremony are interdependent and one with Country. 

This worldview can be interpreted for placemaking and design to create meaningful, authentic and restorative spaces that celebrate a truly Australian identity that embraces its rich 60,000+ year-old Aboriginal  heritage. It offers respite and mindfulness in the present moment. These principles are central in Aboriginal culture and have been for millennia.

If you could do anything again, or differently, what would it be?   

I’d probably find a way to earn a salary earlier. It was impossible to draw any money to pay ourselves for the first eight years. I might also try to teleport us forward a couple of decades at the start, to even out the commercial troughs that came from so little awareness or interest from the market in our early days. 

What probably also slowed our progress, but something I wouldn’t change, is all the years travelling the length and breadth of the country to take our kids back to family in the Gulf, for their birthright, and to continually replenish the well of our design inspiration and intent.    

What does winning the Australian Design Prize mean to you and how can it elevate understanding of the rich Indigenous culture? 

We are immensely honoured. We could never have imagined when we started out nearly 40 years ago, that our desire to celebrate our children’s belonging to John’s Yanyuwa people as well as to mainstream contemporary Australia, would grow to resonate so strongly as a contribution to our nation’s design identity. 

The light the Australian Design Prize will shine on our teams and our projects can amplify an understanding of the infinite potential of Indigenous co-design and its capacity to inspire new dimensions in Australian design.  

You’re in a unique place to share a perspective on what defines Australian design. Can you share your thoughts on that and how you’ve experienced the reactions/understanding from others, especially those from other countries/cultures?

The most powerful design reflects a designer’s unique place in the world – sometimes physical, or metaphorical, emotional, psychological. In Australia, there’s a freedom, an informality, a sense of experimentation and individualism. At their best, Australian designers show an openness, a lack of self-consciousness, a willingness to experiment and take creative risks. 

As a Sydney-based studio, how could we be conservative with the example of Utzon’s Opera House inspiring us every day to absorb and reflect on our special, astonishingly beautiful place in the world? 

Balarinji’s approach to design blends all these elements – the recognition of a contemporary Australia, but one that is becoming increasingly open to its original cultural and spiritual lifeblood.    

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