Magnolia Square Snippets: in the spotlight: designed in brunswick

Friday, May 6, 2011

in the spotlight: designed in brunswick

A couple of weeks ago I gave a talk at the CWC's regular meeting at RMIT. I had a great time and met Neil Hargreaves & Aisling Gallagher of Designed in Brunswick (dib). I was thrilled to have Neil and Aisling at our most recent event and am most appreciative of Neil's generosity with his time and camera! His styled shots of mag square products will appear on the blog soon...

You and your partner Aisling come from creative backgrounds, is this how you met?

Yes we were both working for a cookbook publishing house, I was the food editor and photography manager and Aisling was the senior designer.

What was the impetus to start a home ware label?

It really began with Aisling’s textile studies at RMIT, we had started our own food design and photograph business groupnb.com.au and we were renovating a small factory in Brunswick where we operate from, Aisling wanted to incorporate a screen printing studio and the whole thing started from there.

What are your designs influenced or inspired by?

My interests are a bit mixed really but Aisling’s are more focused to mid 20th Century design, particularly Scandinavian. It is kind of where we ‘centralize’ our collective design work for designed in brunswick.

What are your plans for DIB?

Scarves, Coffee mugs and teacups are next on the list, then ottomans, regarding business, it would be good to get some more retail accounts going.

Advice for someone who is starting out?

Put yourself out there, social networking sites and your own website with some good search words embedded, it is so important now. I know this is about marketing and not products but if you are not out there no one can find you.