Bruce Hall, Robyn Lindsey, Steve Martinuzzo, Les Mason, Ross Renwick, Kirsti Simpson and Hugh Whisson

Today the Design Institute of Australia (DIA), Australia's peak national body for the design industry, announces the names of eight eminent Australian designers to be inducted into the DIA – Hall of Fame for 2024. Induction into the DIA Hall of Fame signifies an outstanding body of work, contribution to the Australian design industry or achievement in furthering the design sector. It is the ultimate industry recognition for design leaders across the profession, and this year, it spans the industrial, interior and graphic design disciplines.

"Today's announcement is a testament to the enduring power of design. For over 25 years, the DIA Hall of Fame has showcased designers who shape our world. These inductees inspire us all and remind us of design's transformative power."

—DIA President Ryan Russell MDIA RAIA

"We are thrilled to honour an exceptional group of individuals from diverse disciplines who have made a profound impact on the design industry. Spanning more than seven decades, this distinguished cohort includes pioneering trailblazers who laid the foundation for the industry we know today, as well as forward-thinking visionaries who continue to reshape and redefine it. Their collective legacy of innovation and creativity has not only advanced our industry but also enriches the broader community through their remarkable contributions."

—Dominic Russo MDIA, DIA Hall of Fame Committee Chair 

The DIA – Hall of Fame 2024 Inductees are:

Bruce Hall
Industrial Designer

Hall studied Industrial Design at RMIT, graduating with an Associate Diploma in Industrial Design in 1963. His talent was recognised by Gordon Bremner, Senior Designer in the Radio and Television Division of A G Healings, who employed Hall as a staff industrial designer in 1961.

Hall worked on the design of televisions, transistors and audio cabinets. In 1967 he was promoted to Senior Industrial Designer and was responsible for the appearance and concept strategy for the company’s products until 1972, when the company was bought by EMI. The Healings factory continued to operate independently for several years, and was eventually closed by EMI in 1975.

His record player model 201G 'Hit parader" was awarded a Good Design Label and also selected by Robin Boyd to represent Australia at the Montreal Expo 67. The injection moulded case for the 'Hit parader" was one of the first uses of ABS plastic in Melbourne.

Hall left EMI in 1974, and the following year began to teach furniture construction and design at the Melbourne College of Decoration where he stayed until 1981. He was awarded a Diploma in Education from the State College of Victoria, Hawthorn in 1975, and was later seconded to teach graphic communication, design education and plastic technology at the Hawthorn Institute of Education from 1981 to 1987.

He also served the profession in various capacities as a panel member of the Industrial Design Council of Australia (Design Awards), Secretary of the Industrial Design Institute of Australia (Vic. Chapter), and an Industry Advisory Panel Member of RMIT (Industrial Design).

Robyn Lindsey
Interior Designer

Robyn Lindsey is a highly experienced, innovative and inspiring design leader who challenges design thinking to deliver authentic and future facing environments.

Born and raised in Bessiebelle, a farming community near Port Fairy in Western Victoria, Robyn studied Interior Design at RMIT, graduating in the early 1980’s. She also holds an MBA in Entrepreneurial studies from Swinburne University as well as an insatiable curiosity and lifelong quest for knowledge.

She worked in Architectural practices before joining Geyer Design in 1990, subsequently becoming an Associate, Director and Partner helping to develop Geyer’s growth into Asia and then as a Global Strategy and Design Leader of the company.

She has mentored countless designers, inspiring them with her strategic vision, boundless enthusiasm, and determination to continually improve and positively stretch the opportunities that design skills provide.  

Her ability to deeply engage with clients, has enabled her to influence and facilitate change, collaborating to create new business opportunities and future focussed outcomes with them.

The clients she has worked with include airlines, global retailer groups, banks, professional services firms, commercial property funds managers, and multinational corporations. Her interest and expertise spans retail, corporate, residential and hospitality sectors.

Robyn has maintained close links with the design industry community by serving on the RMIT University Interior Design Course Advisory Panel, also as a Juror of the Australian Interior Design Awards in 2015 & 2016, through speaking engagements with the DIA, Property Council of Australia and facilitation of design industry events and other Industry Associations.

She was acknowledged for a Lifetime achievement in the 2020 Architecture and Design, Sustainability Awards. Her leadership on retail and commercial workplace projects have led to many National and International Design Awards.

Since leaving Geyer in 2021, Robyn has built her independent design practice collaborating with organisations and their communities to develop transformative initiatives supported by intelligently designed environments.

Steve Martinuzzo
Industrial Designer

Steve Martinuzzo is a product design and development professional of over 30 years, who challenges design thinking to create socially responsible and user-centred products.  

Steve graduated from RMIT Industrial Design in 1985. His first professional position was as the first-ever industrial designer with what is now Boral Lifts. But Rob Pataki had kept tabs on Steve, and in 1987 invited him to join PA Technology just before the firm transitioned into Invetech. After a solid three years grounding there, Steve travelled overseas for a year, including working for Addisons in London on the global BP station rejuvenation design project.  

On return he immediately found a positions with John Wood, and then at Sprocket Design (formerly Form Australia) where Gerry Mussett’s passion and approach influenced Steve’s future aspirations from which his own business would eventually evolve.

After a return stint at Invetech reaching 2IC of the Design Group, Steve left to co-found Cobalt Design with Jack Magree. Despite a humble start their aim was to become a world-recognised product development group, by enriching people’s lives through good design.

Cobalt Design consults to leading Australian and global companies on a diverse range of iconic and commercially-focused products. Of note, Cobalt Design has been involved with Melbourne’s trams since the late 1990’s, and Steve personally worked on a project that resulted in the now iconic “Tarzan Handle” used on Melbourne trams since 2017.

He has contributed to the development of future designers throughout his career. First, as a lecturer at both Monash and RMIT University. Second, through Cobalt Design, who have employed professional placement students every year since 2002, where they have long-term career opportunities as well as workplace support through training and mentoring.

Steve has been an active member of the design community by serving as a Director and Victorian President of the Design Institute Australia, and being a board member of numerous state and federal government committees, as well as an awards judge and expert witness.

More recently, Steve has been an Auditor in a government-centred design thinking into broader client engagements.

Les Mason
Graphic Designer

Graphic designer and art director Les Mason was as much a successful designer in his own right as he was a provocateur, catalyst and protagonist in Melbourne’s burgeoning design scene. For more than thirty years, Mason demanded that the graphic design community and broader industry acknowledge the discipline as a fully formed profession, and that practitioners strive to offer rigorous conceptual and formal processes on par with other disciplines, such as architecture.

Born in California in 1924, Mason chose to study painting and interior design at the Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles, at the relatively late age of twenty-seven. Afterwards he began working in the world of commercial art and advertising as part of the small energetic design group West Coast Designers. In 1961 Mason successfully applied for a one-year contract as an art director at advertising agency USP Benson and relocated to Melbourne.

As an outsider and talented typographer with a unique ability to conceptualise, create, visualise, iterate and communicate a full concept, Mason became indispensable at UPS Benson. His first award-winning campaign was a series of institutional advertisements for Shell Australia in 1962 in which he used unusual photography – a tabby cat with its head caught in an engine manifold – alongside catchy copywriting. The result was humorous, effective and memorable, and the campaign won the Shell Institutional Award for advertising.

The Les Mason Graphic Design studio opened in 1962 in South Melbourne and Mason set about building a practice that became synonymous with good design, discourse, debate, drinking and music.

In 1966 Alan Holdsworth of Lawrence Publishing commissioned Mason to design a prestigious, bimonthly food and wine magazine named Epicurean for the Wine and Food Society of Australia. From 1966 until 1979 Mason designed seventy-seven issues of Epicurean, using his knowledge and love of geometric abstraction, colour field painting, Op Art, Surrrealism to portray food and wine visually.

At the height of his practice, Mason’s commercial clients represented some of Australia’s top consumer goods manufacturers and Government bodies. The list included Tarax, Bowater-Scott, Preservene, Comalco Aluminium, Wynvale Wines, Philip Morris and pharmaceutical producers, Sigma Laboratories and Woods Laboratories. His groundbreaking advertising campaigns for the State Bank of Australia and Australia Post periodically raised questions in Parliament in Canberra.

Mason was appointed a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) and the Type Directors Club of New York in 1975. In 1981, he and his partner, the copywriter Gail Devine with whom many of his award-winning campaigns were created, relocated to Perth. There they were married and worked in their own consultancy for a number of years before travelling extensively and living in South America, where they both focused on their fine art practices.

Les Mason died in Istanbul in 2009 while attending the AGI conference.

Mason's work has been published in many international publications, the most recent in 2024 'Graphic Classics' by Phaidon, the only Australian Designer to be included amongst the 500 artists and designers from 1455 to the present.

Ross Renwick
Graphic Artist, Writer and Founder

Ross Renwick was a graphic artist, writer and co-founder of Billy Blue Creative, Billy Blue magazine and later, the Billy Blue School of Creative Arts. His graphic work was published internationally and locally. 

Renwick was forever generating ideas for quirky business plans and entrepreneurial ventures. He dabbled in advertising, journalism and publishing and even owned a copper fireplace business for a short time. But perhaps his greatest idea surfaced in 1977 when he and Aaron Kaplan created Billy Blue Creative. Never particularly ambitious, Renwick saw Billy Blue magazine as an avenue to promote colloquial Australian stories.

In more than 100 editions, Billy Blue was a launching pad for many aspiring writers. Renwick also used the publication to sell T-shirts with provocative slogans that he had designed. Many protested against pollution and one was said to sarcastically endorse renaming the Tasman Sea the “Neville Wran memorial urinal”.

He was a gifted designer with a beautiful creative flair. In his book The Best of Billy Blue, Richard Deutch described Renwick as having “a flat-out genius for graphic design”.

Renwick and Billy Blue won hundreds of national and international design awards and the company became one of the most highly regarded design firms in Sydney.

Disappointed with the standard of designers graduating from art schools, in 1989 he launched a one-year diploma design course at Billy Blue’s headquarters in North Sydney.

Billy Blue College of Design still operates today, with campuses in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. With a legacy dating back to the 1800s, Billy Blue College of Design at Torrens University Australia is the nation’s most prominent design school.

Kirsti Simpson
Interior Designer

Kirsti Simpson is currently the Studio Executive Chair and Global Leader of Workplace Interiors at international design and architecture practice Woods Bagot, where she is an advocate and ally for her national and international clients. She is an internationally-recognised specialist in workplace design who has earned a place on numerous boards – a testament to an impressive career defined by numerous ‘firsts’ in her profession.

Kirsti undertook a Bachelor of Applied Science, Built Environment at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). She commenced her career at Bligh Voller Neild in Brisbane, where she went on to lead the ID discipline in Brisbane. She then moved on to a 25-year career at Hassell, where she was first female partner, first female managing partner and first female board member.

In her role at Woods Bagot, Kirsti has built a reputation for design leadership through major projects in Australia and Asia from Mumbai to Berlin. Kirsti is a tireless champion of the profession of Interior Design and has worked throughout her career to raise the profile of Interior Design as a challenging and significant profession, one that makes a significant contribution to the life of our cities.

She is also an Adjunct Professor in the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at The University of Queensland, as well as member of both the Economic Development Queensland Advisory Panel and the Property Council Queensland Division.

Kirsti was made a Fellow of Design Institute of Australia in 2017.

Hugh Whisson
Industrial Designer

Hugh Whisson stands out amongst the South Australian design community as a pioneer and owner of the first Industrial Design Consultancy in South Australia in 1961. He was also instrumental in establishing the SA chapter of the Design Institute of Australia, was the first DIA SA chapter President, and later, National DIA President from 1971 to 1973.

In his early career, Hugh established and ran the Colour and Design Department at Chrysler Australia in the 1950’s during the pre-Chrysler Valiant era when cars produced included the Chrysler Desoto, Dodge and Royal models. Hugh was directly involved in the redesign for Australian production with colour, trim and styling changes required to suit Australian requirements and local market needs. Hugh’s position at Chrysler was later filled by Hugh’s understudy, Brian Smyth a DIA Hall of Fame recipient.

Around 1960 Hugh resigned from Chrysler and established Hugh J Whisson Design Associates - Industrial Art and Design Consultants, originally operating from the rear of Hugh’s residence at South Plympton, later moving to larger studio/warehouse/workshop premises in Keswick SA in 1966, and to King William Road, Goodwood in the mid 70’s.

Amongst his many clients was LIGHTBURN INDUSTRIES, manufacturer of washing machines, concrete mixers and the legendary ZETA micro car. Harry Lightburn (CEO) purchased the tooling for a UK micro-car named “Frisky”, shipped it to Adelaide and from this developed the Zeta. Hugh worked on numerous design and R&D projects including the Zeta micro-car, where he was engaged to restyle the fibreglass body, improve the appearance and market appeal and develop the model range. Hugh produced full-size concept renderings in chalk and pastel on prepared plywood panels comprising front, side and rear views.

Amongst Hugh’s many other clients were home appliance manufacturers SIMPSON POPE and KELVINATOR, Lighting and Infra-red lamps manufacturer WYTRAY PRODUCTS, Air Conditioner manufacturers BONAIRE and BDH Industries, and SABCO cleaning products.

Of note was the innovative design work he undertook for farming machinery manufacturer DAVID SHEARER Pty Ltd, including industrial design input for their XP88 self-propelled header which was awarded the first Prince Phillip Prize for Industrial Design in 1968.

Hugh also designed, manufactured and commercialised the CONSTRUCTA display exhibition system. The modular and rapid demountable system was patented, design registered and sold nationally. CONSTRUCTA was awarded an AUSTRALIAN DESIGN AWARD IN 1977.

In the late 1970’s Hugh J Whisson Design Associates relocated to premises to King William Road Goodwood before retiring after 20+ years.

Hugh was a pioneer Industrial Designer in South Australia, DIA SA founder, State and National DIA President.

The DIA Hall of Fame Committee is composed of practising designers and industry figures from various design disciplines and regions. Each year it comprehensively reviews and assesses nominations against a robust set of criteria. 

Over 130 designers have been inducted since the program’s inception in 1996. The DIA – Hall of Fame is an enduring record of the Australian design industry's visionaries, leaders, ambassadors, and contributors. It showcases Australia's design forecasters, our past heroes, and celebrates their significant contribution to Australia's economic development and cultural identity. Past inductees include Susan Cohn, Collette Dinnigan, Garry Emery, Grant and Mary Featherston, Akira Isogowa, Khai Liew, Marc Newson and
many more. 

This year's esteemed designers will be inducted at a ceremony on 20 February 2025 in Melbourne.