‘Awesome’ rewards for hard yards in design
Dave Turnbull’s creative juices started flowing in a high school classroom in Queenstown 20 years ago.
It was there that his idea for Chrome-toaster, a Wellington design agency, came about.
‘‘Design is a structured way of challenging the status quo, so even though I was young, design really struck me as something worth committing to,’’ Turnbull said.
But building Chrome-toaster into an established company took more effort than he likes to recall.
‘‘It’s meant I didn’t go on a big OE like many of my peers, I rarely have any free time, and I’m often found up late at night working to a surprise deadline,’’ Turnbull said.
‘‘This is a challenge for my family, as much as for myself or the business.’’
Running a creative technology business was ‘‘insanely hard’’, he said.
‘‘On one hand, you’ve got exceptionally talented designers and engineers wanting to do their very best work, weekon-week, and on the other you’re typically managing commercial realities such as fixed deadlines and budgets.
‘‘The thing about designers is that they’re very good at spotting problems, and when you’ve got a number of them going hammer and tongs, it’s a given that new problems will come to light, rather often.’’
However, there were also many successes, including one of the company’s latest designs, the Game of Awesome.
The game, which won this year’s Australian Good Design Award of the Year, uses an unconventional approach to address literacy challenges by inspiring reluctant writers.
It enabled students, aged eight to 12, to start creative stories with confidence, Turnbull said.
‘‘A jar of bogeys, a combat moa, magnetic underpants – these are just some of the absurd and funny cards that make up the game … These ideas become the building blocks of stories.’’
Game of Awesome was Turnbull’s favourite project.
‘‘[The game] exemplifies what we do and works on all levels of design.
‘‘It was a no-holds-barred, month-long journey to the heat of design and what emerged has proven to be an exceptionally powerful school resource that blends literacy with laughs, and [it] totally kicks ass.’’
The impact schools were reporting was overwhelming, he said.
‘‘The continued success of this project and the impact we’re hearing about from schools has been overwhelming,’’ he said.
‘‘We hope to take this game and work with other governments to address literacy issues in countries and communities outside New Zealand,’’
To start, the company has established a foothold in Australia.
‘‘We’ve recently opened a desk in Melbourne, and we have people working from Auckland, Dublin, and next month from Prague. We have collaborators in New York city and Queenstown, among other remote locations.
‘‘We find that if you can establish trust with your people overseas, then it’s possible to work from anywhere, any time. So growth for us may not be a linear, nor necessarily located in the same place.’’