With design very much on the Queensland agenda, it’s fitting that the Smart State has breathed life into a new design body, entitled Queenslandersign. Alice Blackwood reports back from the launch in Brisbane.

It was amidst attentive murmurings and a muted clinking of glasses that the Queensland Design Council’s newest initiative, QUEENSLANDERSIGN (pronounced Queensland Design), was officially launched to the architecture and design community.

This took place during the Queensland Premier’s Design Awards presentation evening, held in Brisbane last Thursday, and quickly had the attention of those in attendance.

 

Engaging the interests of both Queenslanders and design, QUEENSLANDERSIGN connects with the more human side of design while delivering a very clear message – and herein lies its reason for being.

Executive Director of Cummins Ross and spokesperson for QUEENSLANDERSIGN, Sean Cummins, introduced the initiative on the night and comments, “The key issue here is making people realise that ’design’ is not for the elite.

 

“It is not about designers. It is about the process, that design thinking teaches us to enhance our lives, our way of thinking, ways of improving productivity, creating wealth and social good,” Cummins says.

The initiative acts as both a portal and a resource, with a full website already up and running and a manifesto that commits to “focusing that energy on thinking about how we, as a state, can be better designed… for the benefit of everyone.”

But what is in a name, and what of QUEENSLANDERSIGN’s future?

“I think it will quickly become part of the vernacular,” says Cummins.

“I am hopeful that products designed in Queensland will one day proudly display the QUEENSLANDERSIGN™ marque, and that eventually the Queensland Design Council renames itself QUEENSLANDERSIGN™ .

“When you can codify an agenda, when you can call it a name and give it an emotion, that’s when movements begin.”

QUEENSLANDERSIGN
queenslandersign.com.au