2020 Awards Jury

VICTORIAN PREMIER’S DESIGN AWARDS CHAIR

Celina Clarke is a Melbourne based Industrial Designer who co-founded ISM Objects in 1990.  She has a passion for contemporary design and architecture and has a keen interest in lighting space.

Her folio of design work includes packaging, furniture and homewares but over the past 15 years she has specialised in luminaire design.

Together with Simon Christopher, their designs have won many awards and their work has been exhibited widely including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.  Their design partnership successfully spans more than 20 years.

Celina continues to develop designs for ISM and has a particular interest in materials and manufacturing.  She enjoys the detailed design process of getting products to market and she has particularly enjoyed working with the Sparks designers.

ROUND TWO JURY – FASHION DESIGN

Grace Lillian Lee, the founder of First Nations Fashion and Design, Grace is a graduate of RMIT University with Honours in Fashion Design and has established herself as one of Australia’s leading Indigenous artist and designer with works collected by National Gallery of Victoria, Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Art Gallery of South Australia, Cairns Art Gallery,  Australian Institute of Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Studies and Kluge-Ruhe University of Virginia. She has personally showcased her works overseas in Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and San Francisco.

She is the founder of the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair, Indigenous Fashion Performance that began in 2013 and has also curated and produced Indigenous Fashion Performances in Papua New Guinea, Melbourne, Adelaide, Darwin. Under her established company, Grace Lillian Lee Productions Pty Ltd, produced ‘Intertwined’ Fashion Performance at the Commonwealth Games in the Gold Coast.

With a strong desire to work with Communities and to encourage creative expressions, her purpose is to guide members towards developing their practice into wearable art and adornment in a contemporary platform. As consultant and mentor, she has worked with Darnley Island community in the Torres Straits, Northern Territory communities Nuiyu and Katherine as well as Mornington Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria , Waringarri in Kununurra + many independent creatives.

Grace has has also been appointed to be a member of the of the advisory board for Swayn Centre for Australian Design at the National Museum of Australia to represent Indigenous Fashion Design + Textiles.

ROUND ONE JURY – COMMUNICATION DESIGN

Aaron is Design Director at Chrometoaster, a multidisciplinary design studio based in Wellington, New Zealand. His design work has received numerous accolades including the Best Awards Purple Pin for Public Good and Good Design Award top gong “Design of the Year” — the only time this has been awarded outside Australia — for the educational game, Game of Awesome.

He has designed a broad range of some of New Zealand’s most recognised brands including Auckland Airport, Silver Fern Farms, Outward Bound, and Footnote Dance.

ROUND TWO JURY – PRODUCT DESIGN

Andrea is the Chief Operating Officer at Osteon Medical. Andrea started her career as a management consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Melbourne.

She has over 15 years-experience driving global corporate strategy, business development, business improvement and operations functions across banking, energy, telecommunications and the biotechnology sectors.  Andrea holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc) Degree and Bachelor of Information Systems (BIS) Degree from the University of Melbourne.

Osteon Medical engineers a specialised range of implant prosthetic products, which are digitally created, specific to each patient and precision milled. Osteon Medical started as a university-sponsored company, then following the successful completion of R&D in May 2011, it was strategically spun off into its own state-of-the-art Melbourne facility.

Today Osteon has grown significantly into a well-capitalised business, expanding their product portfolio and now serving clients throughout Australia Pacific, Asia, Europe and Africa.

ROUND TWO JURY – STUDENT DESIGN

Arthur de Bono is an Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Art Design and Architecture, Monash University. During his three decades of service to design education and research at Monash, he has held the positions of Head of Design, Associate Dean Graduate Research, Associate Dean Research and Deputy Dean.

Arthur’s focus has been on building a highly engaged design culture, integrating practice-based researchers and Higher Degree candidates.

His grants and awards include two Australia Research Council Grants. In 2014 he was inducted into the Monash Honour Roll and, in 2018, the Hall of Fame, Design Institute of Australia.

ROUND ONE JURY – STUDENT DESIGN

David Kusuma is Vice President of Global R&D at Tupperware Brands Corporation and President-Elect of the World Design Organization (WDO).

His focus is to leapfrog conventional boundaries of innovation through open innovation and by developing new technologies and materials to create game-changing product solutions. Prior to Tupperware David worked at General Electric Plastics as Global Manager, Design and Vehicle Engineering, and prior to GE worked at Bayer Material Science. PhD Cranfield University (UK), MSM Purdue University (USA), MBA Tilburg University (Netherlands), BSME University of Pittsburgh (USA), BFA Carnegie-Mellon University (USA).

David is a Fellow of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE), and Fellow of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA).

ROUND ONE JURY – FASHION DESIGN

Courtney Holm is a designer and entrepreneur and founder/director of pioneering circular fashion label, A.BCH. Graduating with a Bachelor of Design in Fashion and Textiles with First Class Honours from UTS in 2012, Courtney worked in the industry for a short time. She launched two businesses, a menswear label and Menske, a tri-yearly showcase for high-end men’s goods and fashion.

After realising there was a gap in addressing environmental and social issues caused by fashion and textile production and consumption, A.BCH was born and all other ventures ceased. Since launching in 2017 A.BCH has showcased in the Fashion For Good Museum in Amsterdam, received the Creative Victoria’s Creators Innovation Fund, was named a finalist for the BT Emerging Designer Award and Mecca Arts Mentorship program with NGV.

A.BCH was invited to showcase at Helsinki Fashion Week and there, Courtney spoke as an ambassador for circularity leadership. Courtney won the Women’s Weekly ‘Women of the Future’ award for Entrepreneurship and Business and the Victorian Premier’s Design Award for Fashion Design in 2019.

Courtney and the A.BCH team continue to innovate across material accessibility, garment life extension and afterlife programs in order to provide an example of how fashion can exist and thrive in a circular economy.

ROUND ONE JURY – SERVICE DESIGN

Cam has a 25-year career as an extremely capable and versatile strategist, designer and communicator.

Cam’s career has a unique blend of design, customer experience and business, and technology—all in senior leadership capacities.

He excels in bridging these areas through the application of vision; strong people management; design leadership; technology and business understanding; and clear communication.

Cam has a degree in Computing and a Master of Management. He has worked as a director, consultant, designer, people manager, communicator and technologist within various fields including telecommunications, banking and finance, government and not-for-profit – working with great effect in organisations large and small.

ROUND ONE JURY – PRODUCT DESIGN

Daphne is Director of the Design Health Collab, situated in Monash University’s Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture.

The lab uses a people-centred design approach to understand and activate significant, high-impact healthcare services and products in the world. Her commercial experience includes a career with Invetech and various design and business development roles for Philips Design Australia focusing on the Asian Pacific region.

Daphne’s years in commercial roles provided a bedrock of experience, creating meaningful innovation, commercialisation and a segue to her current translational research role at Monash University.

Since her Monash appointment in 2015, Daphne’s interest has been in applying design methodology to facilitate innovation that can improve healthcare outcomes for people. “Whether the challenge is considering the ergonomics and ease of use of MedTech devices or creating better patient experiences in healthcare organisations, I believe that design can play a central role in facilitating innovation and creating change in an often complex healthcare landscape”.

Daphne graduated as an Industrial Designer from RMIT University in 1984.

She gained her postgraduate experience through design consultancy, industry innovation teams and an academic appointment with Monash University Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture.

ROUND ONE  JURY – SERVICE DESIGN

Jon Christensen is the Co-Founder of Future Friendly, a multi-disciplinary design studio working across product, organisational, and policy design.

Future Friendly has been in business for over 14 years and has 50 staff across two offices in Sydney and Canberra. The studio’s mission is to create wellbeing projects and outcomes at scale to improve peoples’ lives and positively reshape organisations they work with.

A strong sense of social purpose is at the core of their ambition to create an equitable and inclusive future. This is reflected in the organisations they work with, the projects they undertake, and the individuals and teams they bring together. Across all of these partnerships, Future Friendly has helped their clients put people and customers at the centre of everything they do and to solve their biggest problems.

ROUND ONE JURY – DIGITAL DESIGN

Nick’s career spans 30 years in both traditional and digital agencies. He is driven by creativity and has a passion for new thinking and problem-solving which has resulted in a raft of awards both locally and internationally.

Along with holding key roles in agencies such as DDB, JWT, Y&R and Grey, Nick has been a founding partner in two highly successful local agencies Sputnik Agency, one of Australia’s first digital agencies with a staff of 80 which he ran for 10 years before selling it and now The Royals with offices in Melbourne and Sydney.

Nick has a passion for creating a culture and environment where creative, interested minds can prosper.

ROUND ONE JURY – COMMUNICATION DESIGN

Michaela Webb is Creative Director of Round, a studio she founded in 2002 in Melbourne, Victoria.

Michaela has spent over three years as co-president of the Australian Graphic Design Association (AGDA) and was recently elected to Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI), the world’s leading association of graphic designers.

With over 20 years’ professional experience, Michaela has worked for Wolff Olins and Spin in London. She has lectured full-time at RMIT (Melbourne), Mediarts (New Zealand), and has served as a judge at D&AD, AGDA, BEST AWARDS and AWARD AWARD where she was chair.

Michaela has also spoken at AGIdeas (Melbourne), Sex, Drugs and Helvetica (Melbourne/Brisbane), Semi-Permanent (Melbourne and Wellington), Responsive Projects (Brisbane), and has made contributions to Desktop Magazine, Studio Magazine, Australian Creative, and Process Journal.

ROUND TWO JURY – DESIGN STRATEGY

Joanne is a human-centred design leader and coach. She is a Lead Design Strategist at Portable where she oversees the delivery of projects focused around social need and policy failure. She has worked across a broad array of subject matters including family violence, health, indigenous affairs and the humanitarian sector.

She is passionate about designing for social good, especially to improve the lives of people who are vulnerable and marginalised communities.  Joanne’s approach is to empower people within organisations to discover new ways of innovating, through human-centred design. She is extremely adept at coaching teams to connect with the people they serve through design, uncovering new insights so they can redesign services and develop new strategies which have greater outcomes for communities.  Jo has been designing and teaching across the public sector, community development, the humanitarian sector, health care, financial services and placemaking for 10 years. Her expertise is in design research, co-design, service and strategic design. She is particularly passionate about design’s role in the prevention of violence against women and in realising a more gender-equal society.  Jo has a Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies (Film), a Graduate Diploma in Business  Management and is currently completing her Masters of Design Futures at RMIT.

ROUND ONE JURY – STUDENT DESIGN

Kate is a multi-disciplinary designer who is passionate about improving the human experience. She aims to do this by developing and applying an understanding of the relationships between people, products and the environments in which they interact. Kate is particularly interested in complex problem spaces and designing for positive social change. She also seeks to create playful ways to build emotional intelligence and resilience through design.

Having previously worked as an Industrial Designer, Kate now works as a strategic and social designer in the Design Innovation Research Centre at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She also teaches design at UTS, whilst pursuing her own design endeavours in her spare time. Kate is the author of a pocket-sized book called “The Little Book for Big Worries” and has spoken publicly on a few occasions about managing anxiety and building resilience.

ROUND TWO JURY – FASHION DESIGN

Leila Naja Hibri was appointed as CEO of the Australian Fashion Council (AFC) in February 2020, having been actively involved with the AFC since its inception, and invited to join its Board of Directors in 2018.

Naja Hibri, who until recently, was the General Manager at Australian fashion accessories label Helen Kaminski and a Member of the Board of Directors of HKJC – a Tokyo based joint venture company, has a background in Economics and over 15 years’ experience in luxury and premium fashion brand management and development across APAC, Europe and North America.

She has worked with organisations such as Arthur Anderson, The United Nations, Prada and Luxottica and led teams in Sydney, Auckland, London, New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Leila’s expertise and passion lie in growing Australian brands in export markets while advocating for equal opportunity, sustainability and diversity in business. She looks forward to furthering the voice of Australian fashion both locally and globally, with the aim of creating a best practice industry.

ROUND ONE JURY – COMMUNICATION DESIGN

Luke spent years consulting to the big end of town before deciding to break away from the accountants and try build something better.

Luke is committed to using fresh, meaningful and nonsense-free approaches to branding to elevate the standard of consulting in Australia to meet our international peers and improve the Australian economy in turn.

Formerly of Saffron, Designworks and Futurebrand, Luke’s now focussed on redesigning the design industry itself to produce better results for Australian businesses and international businesses interested in Australia.

ROUND TWO JURY – COMMUNICATION DESIGN

ROUND ONE JURY – DESIGN STRATEGY

Nathan is an internationally experienced author, speaker and innovation consultant living in Sydney, Australia. He is one of the world’s leading Design Thinking practitioners, having practiced and taught it since before it was called Design Thinking. He is the founder of customer-driven innovation and growth firm Methodry.

He was previously a Partner of Design Thinking for global management consultancy KPMG, where he established and led KPMG’s Human Centred Design practice, helping the firm and its clients create customer-centric innovation and transformation.

He has run 100s of innovation projects, 1000s of workshops and spent tens of thousands of hours practicing and training innovation across most industries and continents with global giants and market-leading organisations like the Australian Institute of Sport, Bausch & Lomb, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Diageo, Les Mills, Siemens and Unilever, as well as many small-medium enterprises, startups, not-for-profits and government.

He is super passionate about democratising innovation while balancing the need to maintain rigorous standards of teaching and practice to enable all individuals, teams, organisations and countries to prosper and flourish through design-led innovation. In his 20 years of experience in business Nathan has worked both client side and consultancy side, as well as running his own company.

ROUND TWO JURY – PRODUCT DESIGN

Chances are Richard is responsible for at least one of the small appliances in your home. With 24 years’ experience Richard has overseen the design of over 270 household appliances sold in over 30 countries. Richard is the Director of Design and Innovation for Breville Group globally. He was previously Director of Design and New Product Development at Sunbeam where he restructured the development team to adapt from manufacturing-driven to consumer driven.

Under Richard’s guidance the Breville team has been recognised for design excellence with over 50 awards internationally. Richard sits on the executive team at Breville Group and has been instrumental in refining the purpose and values that drive the Breville brand. He was involved in the positioning, strategy and launch of the Breville brand into North America in 2003.

He has been instrumental in the definition of Breville’s design philosophy which has led to creation of a family of products which are sold internationally. He believes in delivering surprising performance, durability, ease of use and refinement to the consumer.

He has built an integrated team of designers and engineers who are equally at home conceptualising as they are resolving issues on the production line. In 2006 Richard established the Breville Innovation Group tasked with working beyond development deadlines on new trends and blue-sky ideas.

ROUND ONE JURY – ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

Sarah Lynn Rees is a Palawa woman descending from the Plangermaireener and Trawlwoolway people of north-east Tasmania. She is a Lecturer at Monash University, practices architecture at Jackson Clements Burrows Architects (JCBA) where she also is also a Lead Indigenous Advisor: Architecture and Design, she is program advisor and curator of the BLAKitecture series for Mpavilion, a Director of Parlour: Women, Equity, Architecture, and a member of the Victorian Design Review Panel for the Office of the Victorian Government Architect.

Sarah’s practice, advisory and research interests are geared towards a long term aim of Indigenising the built environment. She is widely published in architectural media, and speaks regularly at architecture and design conferences.

ROUND ONE JURY – ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

Vanessa is an Architect and co-founder of Bird de la Coeur Architects.

The studio specialises in housing, including multi-residential housing, and social housing for government and community housing providers. After more than 20 years in practice, their work has been widely published and received numerous industry awards, including the Dulux Colour Awards Grand Prix for the Atherton Garden Social Housing in Fitzroy, and the Victorian Coastal Award for Excellence, the State Government’s Highest Award.

She is a Nationally Elected Councillor and Board Director of the Australian Institute of Architects and is a past president of Victorian Chapter. She was made a Fellow in 2008.

Vanessa is on the Board of Architecture Media and is a member of the Boyd Circle.

Vanessa was the only architect finalist in the inaugural 2019 Women in Design Leadership, in the Good Design Awards Australia.

ROUND ONE JURY – ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

Sue Carr is the Founder and Principal Director of Carr, a Melbourne-based studio representing over 40 years of project success. Since co-founding her first design practice in 1971, Sue’s name has been synonymous with design in Australia. Sue is a thinker, innovator, designer and teacher, synonymous with the evolution of interior design in Australia. Sue’s work as a practitioner and indefatigable educator has been instrumental in redefining the role of interior design and its power to make a positive difference to people’s lives.

Sue describes herself as an agitator for change – always seeking the new, the different, the unique but with an innate understanding and knowledge of what makes a project truly great. This influence and experience saw Sue awarded the prestigious The Australian Financial Review – Westpac ‘100 Women of Influence’ Award recognising Australia’s next generation of outstanding women.

Sue’s vast experience includes landmark projects – across all sectors – such as the highly awarded Jackalope Hotel Mornington Peninsula, Westin Hotel Melbourne, Australian Stock Exchange, University of Sydney Business School, National rollout Norton Rose Fulbright Law Tenancies, Boston Consulting Group and its innovation arm BCG Digital Ventures, interiors of the Southern Hemisphere’s tallest residential skyscraper, Australia 108, as well as a multitude of renowned bespoke residential and multi-residential projects throughout Australia.

ROUND ONE JURY – COMMUNICATION DESIGN

Bren Imboden graduated in Graphic Design from the University of Buenos Aires, and she also studied Stage Design at the Colón Theatre in Argentina. Her love for illustration allowed her to collaborate with many publishers—primarily for children’s books industry— and fashion labels from around the world. Her curious spirit led her to live in different countries and to use that multicultural background as an inspiration for her constant search for profound and meaningful design concepts.

Luis Viale graduated in Architecture from the UM University in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has worked as a designer in various design studios across Buenos Aires, Barcelona, and Melbourne. With a multidisciplinary profile, Luis loves to work in teams and is always ready to face new challenges. He is not only an Architect by training; he has multifaceted skills because of his background. His line of work is based on experimentation and research in the field of architecture, industrial, and graphic design.

Together they run makebardo, a creative design studio based in Queenstown, New Zealand. The studio specializes in branding and packaging design. Their work has been awarded and published worldwide.

ROUND ONE JURY – ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

Professor Erwin Viray is the Head of Pillar of Architecture and Sustainable Design (ASD) in Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).

He was Global Excellence Professor at Kyoto Institute of Technology and Head of the Graduate School of Architecture and Design from 2012 and Chief Communications Officer for the Kyoto Design Lab.

Erwin served as a member of the Singapore President’s Design Awards Jury since 2012 and the Chair of the Jury since 2013. He also served as an Awards Ambassador for the LafargeHolcim Awards in Asia Pacific, was a Jury Chair of archiprixSEA 2012 and 2016 and Jury Member of TRANSFER Architecture Video Award 2019. Among other prestigious design awards, he served as a Jury member for the India Institute of Architecture (Kerala) Architecture Awards 2017, Association of Siam Architects Design Awards 2018, Taiwan Architecture Award 2018.

Professor Erwin is the Lead Curator of the Singapore Pavilion for Venice Architecture Biennale 2018 and Member of Management Board the TOTO Gallery MA in Tokyo. He sits on the Advisory Council for the Barcelona Institute of Architecture and has been Editor of the influential magazine, a+u (Architecture + Urbanism) since 1996. Erwin Viray has produced publications on Peter Zumthor (a+u, 1998); Herzog & de Meuron (a+u, 2002 & 2006 & 2018); Studio Mumbai: Praxis (Toto, 2012); Christian Kerez: Uncertain Certainty (Toto, 2013); and The Asian Everyday: Possibilities in a Shifting World (Toto, 2015).

He is author of Beauty of Materials: When Surfaces Start to Move (Kyoritsu, 2002) and Contemporaneous Architecture (Urban Redevelopment Authority Singapore, 2019) showcasing 70 architectural projects that have shaped Singapore’s landscape in the last 15 years. He is one of the world’s ten critics for Phaidon 10x10_2 (on 100 of the world’s most exceptional emerging architects).

ROUND ONE JURY – PRODUCT DESIGN

Anthony is the Research and Development Manager at Howard Wright Limited, a leading medical bed and stretcher designer, manufacturer, and marketer based in New Plymouth, New Zealand.  Anthony is a Mechanical Engineer with 20+ years of experience.

He has led many projects and worked hands-on in major product developments from concept through to manufacture.

Howard Wright has won a number of design awards for their products, most notably Australia’s Good Design Awards – Australian Good Design Award of the Year in 2010 for its M8 Intensive Care Bed, more recently a Good Design Award Gold 2018, and a New Zealand Best Award – Gold Pin 2018 for its M10 Medical bed.

ROUND ONE JURY – PRODUCT DESIGN

Mark Armstrong is a Practice Professor in Design, a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia and an inductee into the Design Hall of Fame. In 2019, Mark was honoured with Good Design Australia’s Australian Design Prize in recognition for his contribution to the Australian design profession.

The Design Department at Monash University has a strategic focus on the Medtech sector with a newly formed ‘Health Collab’, a design research group focused in the area of Health and Wellbeing.

Professor Armstrong provides industrial design expertise to a variety of medical device projects, working very closely with clinicians and engineers from the University and partner hospitals to produce improved designed outcomes for patients and clinicians. Professor Armstrong currently supervises three Industrial Design PhD candidates in the Health and Wellbeing space.

Mark is recognised as one of Australia’s foremost designers. He applies a collaborative multi-disciplinary process of studio-based research to achieve design excellence and innovation.

As well as a Practice Professor at Monash University, he was Founder and Director of Blue Sky, one of Australia’s leading design consultancies. Over the last decade, Mark has steered Blue Sky to meet new challenges in the Australia design landscape.

His clients include Qantas, Cochlear, ResMed, Omega, Breville, Telstra, Coles, Electrolux, Commonwealth Bank, Philips, Caroma, Victa, United Nations, Olympus and SOCOG.

There is a close working relationship between Professor Armstrong and the other investigators. This has enabled regular exchanges of thinking and the development of methodologies that follow world’s best practice in terms of ideation, experimentation, testing and prototyping.

ROUND ONE JURY – DIGITAL DESIGN

My professional career of 15+ years has been guided by a passion for designing with people in mind and how technology can transform businesses, industries and communities.

Through a human-centred design lens, I help clients build new businesses and capabilities, deliver new products and services, establish new ways of working, and drive design-led transformations. In my current role, I lead McKinsey Design across APAC region and co-lead our Customer Experience practice for McKinsey Digital. As a Digital Expert Partner, I work at both strategic and executional levels across a wider range of issues related to digital strategy, transformation, innovation and customer experience. As the leader for McKinsey Design in APAC, I work to grow our world-class Design capability and bring the best of the Firm to our clients. McKinsey Design helps clients drive growth by delivering breakthrough products, services, customer experiences, and design-led innovation. We take a unique, multidisciplinary approach bringing top design talent from award-winning studios (like LUNAR, Veryday, and McKinsey Digital Labs) together with McKinsey & Company’s deep industry expertise. This combination of analytical rigor and breakthrough creativity helps clients across private, public, and social sectors innovate at scale and speed.

Outside of McKinsey, I actively support socially-oriented businesses in a pro-bono capacity to help build stronger Australian communities. I am a proud Board Member of SANE Australia helping Australians affected by complex mental illness.

ROUND ONE JURY – DESIGN STRATEGY

Ray has deep experience in design capability integration and business culture and strategy development.

Having led a New Zealand Government taskforce on design, he was a key architect in the creation of the Better by Design program in New Zealand and of Federal and State design integration programs in Australia.

More recently his focus has been on facilitating strategic vision and purpose and guiding organisations through transformation. By aligning culture and strategy to intentionally evolve their business models, Ray helps organisations stay relevant and valued.

ROUND ONE JURY – DIGITAL DESIGN

Christy is the Head of Digital Design at the Bank of Queensland. She is a passionate yet pragmatic award-winning innovation professional with 20 years of digital and human-centered design experience.

Christy is driven by the desire to improve people’s lives and solve complex organisational and strategic problems through collaborative design methods. She has designed and delivered enterprise innovation frameworks and design thinking programs for and with large corporates, complex government departments, consultancies, and startups. Her work has been published in national journals and she is the founder of an award-winning startup.

ROUND ONE JURY – PRODUCT DESIGN

Dr Leah Heiss is an award-winning designer and Co-Director of the RMIT Wearables and Sensing Network. Her wearable health technologies include Diabetes Jewellery; swallowable devices to detect disease; biosignal sensing emergency jewellery; and cardiac monitoring jewellery.

Facett, the world’s first modular hearing aid that Leah designed for Blamey Saunders hears won many awards including the 2018 Australian Good Design Award of the Year and CSIRO Design Innovation Award.

Leah’s design work is part of Museums Victoria heritage collection and she has exhibited at galleries locally and globally. She teaches through the RMIT Master of Design Futures and her teaching practice focuses on health sector innovation and design leadership.

ROUND ONE JURY – STUDENT DESIGN

Ian Wong is a designer, collector, curator and senior lecturer at Monash University.

Ian has been invited to curate exhibitions about his research on Australian Design in; Milan, Beijing, Hong Kong, Tianjin, Sydney, Adelaide, and his home town of Melbourne. Exhibitions have included 100 Objects | Australian design in the home, I-CONIC Australian Design, 60 Years of Good Design, BlackBOX – Design and Innovation | Melbourne Australia, Innovators – Australian Design and Innovation, Zmood – Designing Holdens, and 150 Years of Design in Victoria.

The Ian Wong Collection has been a work in progress associated with his research and currently has over 1600 objects designed by Australian designers.

Products designed by Ian as a director of EJO Design have ranged from one-off objects like the RMIT University Ceremonial Mace to brain scanning equipment, Antarctic sleds, and million-dollar high-speed agricultural sorting equipment. Ranges like the pak range for Silvan Australia have recently been reported as the ‘hills hoist’ of rural Australian farm life. This range continues to create significant commercial success for Silvan. Ian’s first product for Silvan, the trukpak, designed in 1989, is still a very successful product and most farms in Australia would have a product designed by Ian.

Ian is currently Director of the Monash Art Design and Architecture Industrial Design Centre (Kunshan) and  Program Director – Master of Industrial Design at Monash Art Design and Architecture, Monash University. This double Master’s degree is delivered at the Southeast University-Monash University Joint Graduate School Suzhou in China.

Ian is President of Melbourne Movement and currently the China representative for the Design Institute of Australia.

Ian’s research into the history of Industrial Design in Victoria is documented in his blog and Instagram @ispyid.

ROUND ONE JURY – DIGITAL DESIGN

Steve helps brands and organisations imagine, design and bring to life better experiences for their customers.

The champion of the user in the design process for over a decade, he has shaped and delivered award-winning digital experiences and products in Europe, North America, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Past clients include Auckland Transport, Deutsche Post, EROAD, Expedia, Google, HBO, Lexus, Red Bull, Rugby World Cup 2011, Spark and Z Energy.

Today he leads the design team at RUSH, an integrated design and technology studio in Auckland, New Zealand.

ROUND TWO – ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

Jefa Greenaway is founding Director of the award-winning practice – Greenaway Architects (est. 1998), a University of Melbourne senior academic of two decades standing, and a regular design commentator on ABC Radio Melbourne.

He’s championed Indigenous-led design thinking for over 25 years as a registered architect in NSW and VIC, including as co-founder of Indigenous Architecture + Design Victoria (not-for-profit), as co-author of the International Indigenous Design Charter, and as Regional Ambassador (Oceania) of INDIGO (International Indigenous Design Network).

He’s a founding signatory of Architects Declare Australia an initiative foregrounding architecture’s role into tackling the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss, is co-curator (with Tristan Wong) of the Australian exhibition at La Biennale Architettura di Venezia 2020/21 and was recently included in the Qantas 100 Inspiring Australians and was honoured to be inducted into the Design Institute of Australia’s (DIA) 2020 ‘Hall of Fame’ signifying an outstanding body of work, contribution to Australian design and/or achievement in furthering the profession.

ROUND TWO JURY – PRODUCT DESIGN

John is an experienced sustainability, policy and communications practitioner working across diverse industries, sectors and portfolios. He served as Executive Director of Product Stewardship Australia representing global consumer electronics brands in the design of the Commonwealth Product Stewardship Act.

John is also Director and Co-Founder of the Ewaste Watch Institute, and he co-authored Australia’s first report on e-waste recycling in 1995 titled: Short Circuiting Waste from Electronic Products.

His work covers appliances, electronics, batteries, furniture, floor-coverings and textiles. Design management has often been at the centre of these engagements including greater attention to how we transition to a circular economy. John’s early work on cradle to cradle thinking represents a pioneering phase at RMIT’s Centre for Design. He has written and presented widely on sustainable product design, product stewardship, extended producer responsibility and the need for smart policy to drive industry reform.

John is an Adjunct Professor with the Institute for Sustainable Futures at UTS and is senior policy adviser to the Design Institute of Australia. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia.

ROUND ONE JURY – DESIGN STRATEGY

Kimberley is a strategic designer with over 25 years experience in design in Australia, Asia, and the UK.

Formerly a Principal at Meld Studios, one of Australia’s leading service and strategic design agencies. She is currently undertaking a PhD in participatory methods to enable sustainable transitions.

Kimberley sits on the Advisory Board for UTS’ Transdisciplinary Innovation Faculty, the Waverley Council’s Public Art Committee, and volunteers for the Coalition of Everyone, an organisation dedicated to the growth of participatory democracy.

Kimberley holds a Master of Information Design, a Graduate Certificate in City Planning, and a Bachelor of Visual Communication.

ROUND ONE JURY – STUDENT DESIGN

Libby Christmas is an Associate Principal at Cobalt Design, Melbourne’s multi-award winning product development agency.  With 15 years of consulting expertise including prior roles at Catalyst Design Group, Knog and Tiller Design, she has brought exceptional technical knowledge and strategy-driven design solutions to projects across the industry.

A graduate of Industrial Design at The University of Canberra, Libby has lectured and taught at RMIT, Swinburne and Monash Universities, and continues to offer her knowledge and support toward the design community.

Libby’s recent major projects at Cobalt include the One299 adjustable backpack frame for Australian Defence Forces, the Dermapen 4 microdermabrasion device and the eShepherd virtual herding solution.

These and other products have received both local and international accolades, including the Australian Good Design Award of the Year and numerous Australian Good Design Awards.

ROUND ONE JURY – SERVICE DESIGN

Ben Hamley is the Asia-Pacific Lead, Future of Work at JLL. He is a Strategy Designer and Researcher of people, culture, technology and design.

ben has a passion for understanding the mechanisms of creativity and innovation in society and this is grounded in his love of cognitive science, philosophy and network theory. He is intensely interested in disruptive technology and design principally because of their ability to traverse disciplinary boundaries.

Ben likes to work at the boundaries of disciplines and with people who have never previously worked together; as both a bridge and a translator.

Ben has worked in both the design and delivery of tertiary education programs and believes that the most effective education is that which is based in economically sustainable and collaborative work.

ROUND ONE JURY – SERVICE DESIGN

When it comes to creating great experiences, Michelle believes in the power and elegance of simplicity, and that interactions should be authentic, meaningful and pleasurable. Michelle is a passionate designer, strategist, and innovator with a background in Industrial Design, user-centered design, research, innovation, experience strategy and brand management.

Currently, Michelle is Principal at Fahrenheit 212 (a part of Capgemini Invent), and Head of the Studio in Atlanta. Her team focus on overcoming challenges and delivering solutions for a range of Fortune 500 clients across various industries, including healthcare, retail, consumer products, automotive and warehouse management.

She loves tackling a complex challenge and finds it rewarding to discern signal from noise.

ROUND TWO JURY – ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

Peter Elliott is a Melbourne architect who commenced practice in 1975. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Art Design & Architecture at Monash University.

In 2015 he was awarded a Doctor of Architecture honoris causa by the University of Melbourne.

He has a special interest in the design of the public realm and has lectured and written extensively on contemporary architecture and urban design. In 2015 he authored a monograph book titled “Episodic Urbanism – RMIT Urban Spaces Project 1996 – 2015’ published by URO Publications.

The work of the practice has won more than 70 National and State architectural and industry awards. This includes an Order of Australia in 1987 for services to architecture (public housing), the RAIA Victorian Architecture Medal 1991 for the Carlton Baths and Community Centre. Projects include; Spencer Street footbridge, the Robert Clark Horticultural Centre Ballarat Botanic Gardens, Observatory Gate Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, RMIT University City Campus Urban Spaces Project, Deer Park Bypass and M80 Ring Road upgrade.

In 2015 he was commissioned for a major new extension to Parliament House in Spring Street and the redevelopment of the Alexander Theatre into a performing arts complex at Monash University Clayton campus.

ROUND ONE  JURY – DESIGN STRATEGY

Sam heads up the strategy team at strategic design agency Today and oversees the direction of Today’s projects.

A couple of his projects include Speckle, an ethical lending platform and 2018 Good Design Award Winner, and Study Melbourne’s Unlock Melbourne app which helps students discover and stay safe in the city.

He’s been a leading force for clients working in government, not-for-profits, major global brands and start-ups.

ROUND ONE JURY – FASHION DESIGN

Tanyaradzwa Sahanga is a leading voice and proponent of change in all aspects of product creation.

Innovative in her approach, over the last decade Sahanga has regularly challenged the status quo and this has resulted in ground-breaking and award-winning product and processes developed globally for some of the world’s most iconic organisations, most notably the circular product: FUTURECRAFT.LOOP

Tanyaradzwa Sahanga is a believer that problems are simply questions seeking answers, and she avidly lives by this philosophy. Sahanga is a motivator, a storyteller, a thought leader and a strategy shaper possessing a strong solution-orientated mindset. Sahanga has recently launched the transformation platform 37Thanks, where she now serves as the Transformation Lead, with the mission to engage with the full value chain to make tangible, sustainable product creation the norm.

Sahanga is an internationally respected speaker on sustainability, product creation and the transformation necessary to advance the industry. Sahanga speaks to audiences of product creators and industry experts, as well as educating broader audiences of non-industry backgrounds.

She speaks globally from Asia to America for audiences ranging from tens to thousands. Sahanga is a resonant communicator and inspiring storyteller.

ROUND ONE JURY – FASHION DESIGN

Virginia Dowzer is a curator, creative and lecturer who works predominantly in the space of fashion and related fields.

Virginias’ interests lie at the intersection of fashion, art and craft and she is drawn to the skill and qualities of the handmade.

She has a keen interest in observing cultural anthropology alongside popular culture and has a history in biological sciences.

Her time working in the Textile and Dress Department of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London was instrumental in guiding her career path.

Virginia has a BA in design majoring in technical bodywear.