About Agency in Design

Founded in 2020, and located on Widjabul Country, Agency in Design is a leading Indigenous ontological Design company.

The company started with a clear goal – to seed Indigenous Knowledge more broadly in community – and has been able to do this at all levels; collaborating with National clients whilst still remaining embedded in community projects.

Strategic Design

So often, when someone asks about our work as designers, there tends to be a bias towards thinking we only focus on how something looks. That aesthetic is our driving interest. Whilst we are conscious of this, and do work in visual and graphic design spaces, most of our work is in strategic design. Working to understand why something should be, and where and how it fits within the bigger picture.

We have worked in the domains of whole of organisation Strategy, Indigenous Engagement, Reconciliation Action Plan, Project Frameworks and Pedagogy and Curriculum design. Within each is a desire to appropriately locate organisations so that all stakeholders feel connected to the work, understand the goals that drive this, and can all be aligned with the key insights that power their future movements. This is a transdisciplinary, inherently collaborative, endeavour that is guided by relational frameworks inherent in Indigenous Knowledge systems and as such, it is not simply a process of designing a distinct service or defined response to a given problem. Rather, it is about shaping whole systems, crafting frameworks and informing guiding policies that each embrace complexity and diversity as inherent drivers for action.

Identity Design

When clients come to us to support with their ‘Brand’ or ‘Logo’ Design, we introduce the concept of Identity Design – or more accurately Living Identity Systems.

Identity Design is a comprehensive approach to Brand work, that includes designing logos, typography, colours, and all associated visual imagery, that are consciously crafted so they relate to one another and create a consistent and recognizable image. This informs the way everyone that interacts with a given brand perceive it. It is why crafting a coherent and reflective Brand Identity is so important. It communicates outwardly the character, intent and actions that emerge from within a given organisation.

It is with this knowledge of importance that we offer services to develop Living Identity Systems. These are dynamic branding systems that are consciously designed to be adapted for diverse and emerging applications. Systems that equip our clients with the resources, tools and insights to continually find the best ways to communicate their work in constantly moving social contexts.

Graphic Design

Professor Norman Sheehan (whose contributions to the discipline of Indigenous Knowledge and Design are extraordinary) has noted that the visual is a fundamental aspect of being human and of Indigenous ways of being, knowing, seeing and doing. That it is a constant that enables us, through its existence and everyone’s engagement with it, to express knowledge as something that is alive and placed, layered, patterned and interactive. Graphic design is simply the practice of using the visual (through a visual design crafted for purpose) to communicate key ideas or fundamental structures. It is visual communication.

This can manifest as work in logo and branding, large scale art installation and murals, digital art, web elements, social media graphics, packaging, documents and collateral or clothing and merchandise. The job of proper graphic design in all these instances however is to not only ‘look good’ (as understood by appropriateness and fit) but also effectively communicate a specific message to a specific audience. In this way, good graphic design is design that authentically communicates intent in ways that those who are related to can see their relation. This helps empower people to engage with the visual in ways that build stronger connections with its orienting subject or organisation.

Principled Design

Agency in Design is guided by Indigenous Knowledge Principles that dictate our work. 💪🏽

Respectful

of all things

We position ourselves respectfully on Country, with the community and our clients, to hold space for culturally diverse perspectives to find their relations.

Relational

through patterns of interaction

Relational being and doing is not well understood. Relational does not just mean relationships, but being able to recognise the relevance of knowing what you do where; observing patterns across and between other things.

Accountable

to Country and Community

Design will design; and what we do will have impacts beyond the scope of our intention. So, our work must be consciously designed to fit respectfully with Country and Community. This consideration of broader impact not only ensures that the work is alive and active in the world, but it supports the possibilities that are emergent.

Careful

in our actions

We operate within an ethic of care. This is an applied ethic that builds on our accountability to recognise that when we move, we do so in a considered way with an ethos to do no harm.

Resilient

as an expression of agency

We find safety through awareness and appropriate response. We work to know and share internally so we can move in the same direction with each other, recognise potential harmful impacts, and have the agency to find our own safety. Our resilience emerges through our awareness of what we can and can’t do, what could harm our work, and the agency to respond in ways that honour our collective movement.

Authentic

as an expression of Care

We authentically share ourselves and respect others as they share themselves. Standing up for our principles, and showing all who engage with us who we are, creates authentic connections with others and gives us a strong identity for our future.

Timely

in our movement

We meet everything in its time. Sometimes, there are emergent patterns that challenge the notion of time, but which give great life to Knowledge. These things will challenge us in different ways. They will cause us to rethink and revisit because Knowledge is reflexive. It calls for such a response. But these actions can be done in a manner that respects the entire movement of work. This is what it means to be timely. To respect the process, speak to it in time, and be transparent just as Knowledge flows like water towards its desired point, so to must the actions we take and communication we provide along the way.

Engaged

as a duty to the work

Our work is guided by Aboriginal Cultural Strengths. They form the foundation for all that we do. We have a responsibility to share these in our work, as gifts, and when we do this respectfully and properly, our work can be experienced as living, adaptive, engaging and engaged processes.

Custodial

with our aesthetic

Indigenous Knowledge informed Design is not just about the aesthetic. But we are conscious that an ‘Indigenous’ aesthetic is something that people respond to. As a signifier of our relational belonging for some, and demarcation of well-meaning intent for others. We have a responsibility to this. To acknowledge that our practice is about restructuring and crafting options for movement and fit, but that these are often best expressed through Indigenous aesthetic visual design. However, where visuals belong, and the extent to which an aesthetic is employed, must always be guided by an awareness of its appropriateness for the given context. We are charged with holding the integrity of this aesthetic both in its place and time and within the broader pattern of relations outside the work.