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Design Your Life podcast with Vince Frost
Listen in as creatives and visionaries discuss the role design has played in shaping their success.
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DESIGNING WITH HISTORY AND MAKE-BELIEVE WITH SIBELLA COURT
There’s an art to bringing history into modern creativity as more than a reference.
Sibella Court is adept at it. The creative director, author and interior and product designer has made a career out of creating with her love of history at the forefront. When you learn she grew up with two incredibly creative parents — a builder father skilled in transforming spaces and a mother who specialised in Central Asian textiles — her multifaceted creative career comes as no surprise.
After studying history at university in Sydney, and getting a start at Australian Vogue, she spent a decade shooting editorial in New York. Since returning to Australia in 2006, she’s written and published six books, hosted a TV series, and designed the interiors for some of Sydney’s best-known restaurants and bars, including Mr Wong and The Ivy.
Listen in as Vince and Sibella Court discuss her lifelong love of history, working at Australian Vogue in the early 90s and the seismic impact the death of a parent can have. -
DESIGNING A SENSE OF SURPLUS WITH VIGGO HAREMST
For a small country with a small population, the Danes are incredibly well-known on the global stage as highly skilled when it comes to design. In Viggo Haremst’s case, he knew he wanted to be an architect, like his father, very early in life. But he credits his Swedish mother for his commitment to process and detail.
As a Design Director and Partner at the prominent Danish architecture firm Henning Larsen he steered the winning proposal for the Canberra Theatre Centre and is leading the city-shaping Lighthouse at Darling Park in Sydney. The practice believes good design begins with curiosity, and is leading the world when it comes to evidence-based building design with a focus on investigating and prototyping innovation in sustainability.
Viggo is a sought-after keynote speaker who delivers insights into Henning Larsen’s design method and projects, and the future of workspaces.
Listen in as Vince and Viggo discuss learning about limits from Zaha Hadid, how to create a longer life cycle for a building and why Danes are so good at design. -
DESIGNING WELLBEING AT WORK WITH DR. ESTHER STERNBERG
How much do the environments we inhabit impact our health and wellbeing? And does our emotional state impact our physical health?
Dr. Esther Sternberg is internationally recognised for her discoveries in the science of the mind-body interaction in illness and healing, and the role of place in wellbeing. She is a pioneer and major force in collaborative initiatives on mind-body-stress-wellness and environment interrelationships.
Her inspirational and popular books — there are three, the latest ‘WELL at WORK: Creating Wellbeing in Any Workspace’ has just been released — are backed by science and are changing the way we design public and private places for people.
Dr. Sternberg’s list of achievements is extensive. She’s advised the World Health Organization and the Vatican, and briefed high level U.S. Federal Government officials. She’s also moderated a panel with the Dalai Lama and been recognized by the National Library of Medicine as one of the women who ‘Changed the Face of Medicine’. She has authored over 240 scholarly articles and edited 10 technical books on the topic of brain-immune connections and design and health.
Her two decades-long research with the U.S. General Services Administration, using wearable devices to track health and wellbeing in the built office environment, is informing healthy design standards for workplaces in the public and private sectors around the world.
Listen in as Vince and Dr. Sternberg discuss immersive reality nature recharge rooms, being one of only ten girls in a class of 110 at medical school and the best prescription for a healthy building. -
DESIGNING WITH SATIRE WITH PAUL DAVIS
When we think of life on earth in the context of the universe, being human can seem absurd. That’s what British artist and illustrator Paul Davis thinks. When he was 17, growing up in Somerset in England, his father died suddenly. But he’d already taught him everything he needed to know about space, time and human existence.
Davis’ sometimes controversial work has been widely published and exhibited. He’s regularly commissioned by international broadsheets and magazines, has created animated idents for BBC Radio 4, and his handwriting has been used in animated adverts for American Express.
The artist’s craft is born from a deep curiosity about the idiocy and beauty of being alive. And a compulsion to make art as a form of therapy. He doesn’t just want to make art. He has to. And he’s not shy about being satirical. Despite a long battle with alcoholism (he’s been sober for over six years), his work has made him a London icon.
Listen in as Vince and Paul discuss his experience of alcoholism and thoughts on AA, drawing Trump giving himself a blow job, and how to know when you’ve pushed it too far. -
DESIGNING BRAND REPUTATION WITH JOHN RUSHWORTH
The craft of graphic design has changed dramatically since the 80s. Computers. The popularisation of branding. Over the past four plus decades John Rushworth, the design behemoth Pentagram’s longest serving partner, has seen it all. Despite these seismic shifts, he believes the thinking and innate human ability it takes to do truly impactful work hasn’t changed.
Rushworth has had a huge impact on the world of design. He’s delivered graphic solutions to clients across almost every industry from Polaroid to Great Western Railway with his in-dept approach to design. Working closely with his clients, he works to draw out what it is that truly makes them who they are. Then turns them into strategically focused and visually compelling brands. He’s also had a huge impact on Vince Frost – he was his boss at Pentagram and the person who has influenced his career and design philosophy more than any other creative.
Growing up in working class Yorkshire, he’d never heard the word design. It was a student teacher at his, “if I’m honest, pretty bad school,” who’d studied the craft that set a task to design an album cover that his eyes were opened. At age 14, he was good. At his Preston College of Art graduation show he was picked up by Conran Design Group. A year later he moved to Pentagram, just in time for their 10th birthday party. In 1987 he became the studio’s first associate and two years later was the first employee to be invited to become a partner.
The creative has been member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) since 1994 and a Director of the Outset Contemporary Art Fund since 2012. His work has been exhibited worldwide and has received many international awards including a gold medal at the Lahti Poster Biennale and multiple D&AD silver pencils.
Listen in as Vince and John discuss the business of design, the impact of computers and AI on the design process, and what Vince learned working under him at Pentagram in the 90s. -
DESIGNING TIMELESS BOOKS WITH EMILIA TERRAGNI
In the past decade, the debate about the role of books in our increasingly digital world has been a hot one. This devotee of the printed form is unequivocal. She believes content online has simply pushed publishers to make better books.
Emilia Terragni is Associate Publisher at Phaidon Press, the world’s leading publisher of books on art, design and culture. Phaidon turns 100 this year. Terragni has been there for 22, specialising in books on architecture, design, food, fashion and art, and is considered one of the most influential editors working in the field today.
Born and raised in Como, Italy, by a creative family where books were incredibly important, she ran away aged 19 to study in Venice. A PHD in fine art set her on the path to a career as a curator or art critic. But it was during her time in the archives of the Vitra Design Museum cataloguing the work of architect Mexican architect and engineer Luis Barragán that she met with Phaidon, and the rest is history.
Listen in as Vince and Emilia discuss working together on Nan Goldin’s iconic photography book The Devil’s Playground in 2003, the privilege of working with the prolific British graphic designer Alan Fletcher to his dying day, and being named The Queen of Cookbooks by the Wallstreet Journal. -
DESIGNING SPATIAL EXPERIENCES WITH CARLO GIANNASCA
Which parts of our heritage and childhood form who we are and impact what we do in later life? If you spend your childhood wallpapering your bedroom walls with drawings of Europe’s great buildings, are you desisted for a career in built environments? Does being a self-confessed neat freak make you better at simplifying complex problems? In this case, the answer is resoundingly, “yes!”.
Carlo Giannasca is a multi-award-winning graphic and three-dimensional environmental designer who is a sough-after thought-leader and speaker at universities and design conferences worldwide. For almost four decades, he’s been engaged in helping people and their communities reimagine and implement new possibilities for work, learning and life.
He’s also Partner and Managing Director of Frost*collective. During his 20-year professional partnership with Vince, he’s transitioned from Creative Director to Managing Director, and led major environmental graphics and wayfinding schemes for Qantas’ terminals and headquarters, the International Towers at Barangaroo and Sequis Tower Jakarta.
Listen in as Vince and Carlo discuss; getting his start in the 80s with Australia's first iconic designer Garry Emery, how sneaking out of a hotel in Venice aged 10 on a family holiday and having to find his way back alone impacted him, and what it means to earn a 4th dan black belt in karate. -
DESIGNING A BETTER LONDON WITH PETER MURRAY OBE
Buckminster Fuller and Cedric Price were mentors when Peter Murray OBE was studying architecture in the 1960s. Peter Cook and the Archigram Group were idols, “they were the Beatles of architecture at the time”. Not a bad selection of teachers for someone interested in the craft from the age of ten.
Since then, Murray has had a huge impact on shaping the city of London. Although he qualified as an architect, he didn’t become one. His calling was to carve out a huge career writing about and promoting it. He founded the design and architecture magazine Blueprint and the global communications company Wordsearch. And curated major exhibitions at the Royal Academy in London. He also started the London Festival of Architecture - now a significant annual event in the cultural life of the capital.
Murray has written and published books about architecture, been a Mayor's Design Advocate, Chairman of the London Society and a Visiting Professor at the IE Business School in Madrid. He is Chairman of the Temple Bar Trust and has gathered a huge list of accolades through his career. Including the OBE he received for leadership in the arts, architecture, city planning, design, publication and charity in 2021. He’s also a keen cyclist, raising money for charity each year through cycling, and advocate for active cities.
Today, his time is focused on the New London Architecture centre, which he founded in 2005 as a centre for debate and discussion about the changing face of the capital. Some might say London is a better place to live thanks to him.
Listen in as Vince and Peter discuss working in design media in swinging 60s London, how his wildly successful studio Wordsearch came to be, and why, when you see an opportunity, you have to take it. -
DESIGNING A GOOD WEEKEND WITH KATRINA STRICKLAND
The media landscape has changed dramatically in the past decade. One person who’s lived through the changes with her dream job intact is Katrina Strickland.
The journalist and author is the Editor of one of Australia’s most widely-read publications – the Good Weekend Magazine. After realising the law-career she’d studied for wasn’t for her, Strickland started out as a cadet in the business section of the Herald Sun. Later, she transitioned to cover the arts. A beat she held across multiple newspaper titles for over 25 years. For someone whose parents told them, “Journalists are alcoholic no-hopers”, her determination and consistency has paid off.
In 2013 her book, Affairs of the Art, was published by Melbourne University Publishing. It explores the role those left behind play in burnishing an artist's reputation after they die. Today, her gratitude for and commitment to a career she considers a huge privilege show no signs of slowing down.
Listen in as Vince and Katrina discuss why human stories make for the most loved content, the brutal pace of working on a weekly publication and what can happen in the black window between when you go to print and when your publication is out in the world.