12 Questions
12questions@nzherald.co.nz
4DESIGN live the lifestyle in Queenstown while only working with international clients; Flux Animations Studios work with Disney; and Resn works with global agencies that represent the likes of Adidas. But there’s a lack of understanding about the value of design.
We’ve just had a Value of Design report done which showed design brings $10.1 billion to New Zealand’s economy, or 4.2 per cent of GDP. That’s more than agriculture contributes, at $8.1b.
Why is the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) category a tough one?
Supermarket brands have a much faster turnaround than boutique packaging so you don’t have the same leisure of time to create something that stands out on the shelves and communicates to consumers. Our design community is really pushing the boundaries in this category. It’s the storytelling and emotion. I mean, look at Serious Popcorn. How can you not love that package and want to open and eat it? I’m Miss Switzerland — I can’t have favourites.
One fabulous design story was Goodnature’s automated possum traps. The owners were furniture designers with a passion for conservation who designed CO canister-powered traps that self-reset so they don’t have to be cleared by forest rangers. They’ve been hugely successful in reducing the cost of pest eradication, they’re humane and toxin-free.
User experience design is about how we engage with the customer.
Entries to your Public Good award have doubled. What have been some highlights in this category?
Game of Awesome is a simple card game that inspires kids to write their own stories. It’s based on research with teachers in schools and has bogies and farts and all those things that give kids the giggles. The pack is aesthetically beautiful as well.
Another was a ping-pong table installed at Britomart as part of Auckland Council’s interactive art series POP, which used social engagement to discourage antisocial behaviour.
What’s an area of our lives where we might not be aware that design is in action?
User experience design is about how we engage with the customer. The Government has made a big push into user experience. For example, Inland Revenue, knowing people hate filling in forms, created a GST one that was intuitive to use and more people got their GST in on time as a result. Auckland City Hospital set up a joint design lab with AUT, researching how to make hospital life more focused on patients’ experience. Fisher and Paykel Healthcare worked with clinicians and parents to design a breathing mask for premature babies that was easy for nurses to use and showed enough of the tiny baby’s face that parents could fall in love with it.
What’s the Best Effect award for?
It’s about bringing design higher up the food chain to CEO level so it’s at the forefront of business strategy. Methven and Fisher and Paykel Appliances are good examples of design-led companies. Jamie Whiting turned Barkers Menswear around by looking at every touchpoint of the business through a design lens from the brand to the website to the stores. Sales at their new Wellington store increased by 60 per cent when they focused on making the shopping experience pleasurable. NZ Trade and Enterprise is helping companies take a customer-centred approach with its Better by Design service.
What was your childhood in Auckland like?
Very family focused. Every weekend we’d do our chores and then “follow Dad’s nose” on little tiki tours exploring the beaches and countryside, always deviating to the best ice cream shop on the way home.
Art was my favourite subject at Aorere College, which was a new school with a young and forwardthinking principal. I became an art adviser for the education department. We’d show schools how to develop purposeful art programmes.
Through my boss, Murray Gilbert, I became involved in this amazing arts community. His friends Ralph Hotere, Pat Hanley and Stanley Palmer, would visit. Every Monday and Tuesday was a round of the art galleries.
Did New Zealand have much of a design industry at that time?
Yes, interior design was a flourishing industry by the time I arrived in it. Peter Bromhead and John Hughes and his partner from Martin Hughes Associates had established it as a profession with fee charges.
What’s the difference between art and design?
Artists take more risks personally, while designers have the compromise of working with a client. You do the best you can to push them towards where you think strategically they need to go. People tend to think of design purely in graphic terms but it’s way deeper than that. We hold a seminar day for secondary schools to help students understand options such as product design, interactive, moving image and spatial design. Increasingly we’re seeing designers collaborate between disciplines. Best Design Awards Friday, October 6