Bryon Fitzpatrick
Bryon Fitzpatrick is an internationally renowned educator and designer whose impressive list of accolades during many decades as a practicing designer include European awards for: Movie Camera, Germany and Yugoslavia (1964); Glassware, Belgium (1966); and Portable Radio (for Bang & Olufsen), Denmark (1966) in addition to several Australian Design Awards. His considerable talent for drawing and rendering reportedly earned him the title ’the drawing machine’ from his peers.
Bryon originally studied Design at Queensland Technical College in Brisbane. His academic pursuits since have included: six years as Chair Industrial Design/Transportation Design at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit where the department was recognised as the world’s leading automotive design program; Art Center College of Design California and Art Center College of Design Switzerland as lecturer for nine years collectively; Rhode Island School of Design; Adelaide School of Design and Queensland University of Technology Brisbane as visiting lecturer.
Professionally, Bryon was also founding President of Design Ink Brisbane between 1979-1988 during which he was a featured artist on a nationwide promotional tour for Pantone. As a product designer for Ogle Design in Letchworth, England Bryon’s award winning work spanned automobiles, buses, bicycles, and motorcycles with the BSA Three and Triumph Trident models of particular note. Other roles held in the automobile industry included: Ford Motor Company in both England and Germany; and British Motor Corporation in Sydney.
During his time as chief designer of a large and prominent consultancy, Bernadotte & Bjorn in Copenhagen, Bryon’s work on photographic and cinematic equipment, table, glassware and audio products was awarded three European Gold Medals.