The Project

Australia is one of the wealthiest and most privileged countries in the world and yet access to technology is far from universal. Research has shown that Australians are heavily reliant on mobile technology while also revealing a strong digital divide among communities. More than 33,000 students in NSW were without home internet access at the last census. This included fifteen per cent of public-school students in the state’s far west, and just one per cent in Sydney’s northern suburbs and Sutherland Shire.

Young designers coming into this profession can sometimes face an internal battle, one that makes them question whether or not, as a designer, if they can make a difference or a change in the world. Rachel Holt, designer from issue 8, is one such designer. For the fresh designers coming through you can think of your role or skills learned as a designer as a tool, a tool to design for change—to design for good.

All images supplied by Eleonore Ly

Cosiness and street furniture aren’t two things you would normally pair together in a sentence… but why wouldn’t they be? There has been a shift, worldwide, to design for discomfort and unpleasantness when it comes to designing for public spaces.

Behind the screen, you might say, is an invisible force that dictates what we read, hear and watch. This force is made up of an unknown number of algorithms that monitor what we do and attempt to anticipate what we might like to do next. UTS graduate Hayley Cumming has developed a workshop ‘Uncanny Algorithms’ as a way of understanding on these invisible forces. As she says…

A compilation of images and clips created over the course of research about the screen as a material space. 

They slip into our pockets and palms and sit on our walls and desks, seamlessly extending our reach into the world. Screens are everywhere but what if we grabbed a hold of this convenient interface, recognised its materiality and played with it? UTS Visual Communication Design Honours graduate, Joanna Shuen, conducted a research project that explores our relationships with ‘the screen’ and poses these questions…

In a fast-paced world, society has become reliant on the use of non-degradable and cheap materials when it comes to designing products for use. For humanity to move forward into the future with challenges like the climate crisis facing us, it’s simply not feasible to continue using materials like plastic in our products. UTS honours graduate in product design, Josh Riesel, rethinks the plastics problem and offers a new way forward.

Packaging is a problem. It surrounds almost every product we make. It is also mostly single use and too often plastic. It becomes a mountain of waste. But what if there was another way. UTS honours graduate in Industrial Design, Sari Tredinnick’s capstone project, Packed Into The Packaging, rethinks the packaging problem and offers a new way. As Sari explains …

Ciara Cahill | 2019 Honours Industrial Design Graduate, UTS

The human body does not react well to constant pressure, however that’s what happens when people spend long periods of time being immobile through injury, incapacity and/or age. The result are pressure sores. It is estimated that 1 in 13 patients in hospitals or care facilities are afflicted with pressure sores at some point during their stay.

Rachel Cronin | Interior Designer

When we think of places, we first tend to think of physical places and then perhaps representations of places online. However, there are other representations place. In ‘Three Body(ies): The Home with the Rotten Heart’, our second university academic project, UTS graduate Rachel Cronin investigates representations of place on film as they hold up a lens to crime.

This project might seem familiar to some of you and you’d be right! We visited Braille Bricks back in issue 2 – For Good. Learning and playing, these two things go hand in hand. But what if you could combine the two AND bridge the gap between children with and without visual impairment?