Being driven is one thing. But being driven by trauma is another. It’s a special kind of motivation, and when combined with a competitive nature and natural feel for what an audience wants, great things can be achieved. Aidan Anderson is the Founder and CEO of The Local Project — the fastest growing design platform in the Asia-Pacific region. The platform is followed by design and architecture lovers worldwide, and champions authentic design, showcasing and supporting architects, designers, makers and suppliers. Incredibly, he started it by profiling his friends and local makers on an Instagra ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more

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 an ..read more

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 Expres ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more

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 communication ..read more

The media landscape has changed dramatically over the past decade. One person who has lived through the changes with her dream job intact is Katrina Strickland. The journalist and author is editor of one of Australia’s most widely-read magazines, Good Weekend, which appears in print and online every Saturday in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. After realising that the law career she’d studied for didn't float her boat, Strickland secured a cadetship in the business section of Melbourne's Herald Sun. Later, she transitioned to covering and editing t ..read more

Landing a job at the London architecture firm you idolise right out of college is a good sign for any young architect, particularly one from another country. Landing the Great Court at the British Museum as your first project is another. Any architect starting out with these two achievements under their belt would wonder, ‘Where to from here?’ Daniel Goldberg is known for his progressive approach to designing from the inside out, with a focus on spatial theory and anthropology. His childhood interests of art and the technical aspects of how things are built have evolved into a wildly successfu ..read more