About DesignFreo
DesignFreo is a platform celebrating design and designers in the port city of Fremantle / Walyalup and beyond.
We’re a not-for-profit founded by a group of local designers, makers and doers. We love design, we love our town and we care about its future. We’re interested in how design can bring joy to the everyday and also in how design can tackle the bigger issues facing our communities and planet.
Through events, workshops and exhibitions, DesignFreo creates opportunities to see what designers do, hear their ideas and join a broader conversation about why it’s important. Good design. Bad design. Who cares and why does it matter? Let’s talk.
The DesignFreo Team
We’re a team of committed volunteers, united by a belief in the value of design.
PIPPA HURST / CHAIR, CREATIVE DIRECTOR
DesignFreo brings together two things I love – Fremantle and design. Great design makes my day. Like my Orbitkey – genius! I’m interested in more-than-human thinking that doesn’t see us as separate from nature, because humans aren’t the most important thing on the planet.
MICHAEL TUCAK / VICE-CHAIR
As a creative industries lawyer, I believe strongly in the power of creativity and design to resolve complex problems. I’m also a local government Councillor and Design Panel Chair – and believe human-centred design can evolve governance decision making in itself. I co-work in Freo.
EMMA BRAIN / SECRETARY
I live and work in Fremantle and regularly pinch myself about how lucky I am to call this place home. I work in communications at The Fulcrum Agency and part of my mission is to talk up the value of design, from useful objects through to our built environment. Great design is good for everyone.
REBECCA CLARKSON / TREASURER
I guess i’m a bit of a ‘city dreamer’ in that I can’t help but get involved in projects that seek to protect our city’s environment and unique heritage. As well as having a love for design and Fremantle, I bring expertise in community development, philanthropy, and stakeholder engagement to our Board.
CLAIRE MCGOWAN /
Design touches all of us – everyday. My studio, Detail, is a Fremantle-based PR and marketing agency that works across art and design, retail, hospitality, property and community. As passionate communicators, we share the value of design with a wide audience and believe design is for everyone.
LAYLA SALEEBA /
Good design ultimately makes us feel good. I’m passionate about honouring good design, and ‘quality over quantity’ every time! DesignFreo aims to advocate for and inspire us to look for good design in our everyday life. After a career in production and development of Arts events, I made the long desired move into interior design, and now live and work in North Fremantle.
JULIA ARMSTRONG / OPERATIONS, SPECIAL PROJECTS
I believe in the power of collective to cultivate meaningful change and social impact. I run Anfisa – a curatorial platform dedicated to promoting the work of emerging and established Australian artists. I am interested in exploring the intricate relationship between art, craft, and design.
GABI SCOTT /
Design thinking challenges assumptions and focuses on solutions, not problems. At Gabrielle Scott Studio we meld those ideas with considerations of courage, collaboration and engagement to yield unique results. Our goal at DesignFreo is to foster that thinking beyond the design world to encourage greater community-led innovation.
JEN LOWE /
Design is everywhere! Whether designing a chair, a home or a precinct, my approach at Ohlo Studio recognises that good design should help to build the character and quality of place, space and community. In essence, that’s what we hope to do through DesignFreo; connect designers with the ‘real world’ and the ’real world’ with design.
LOREN HOLMES /
The design process – especially its application across disciplines – is what drives me as a designer and as a committee member. As Design Communications Director of Freo’s UDLA, I enjoy the challenge of integrating place-led storytelling into spaces and surfaces, and for conveying ideas across scales and mediums.
ANGUS MCBRIDE /
Enduring furniture demands a willing client and an inherent purpose. When these forces meet magic happens. Running operations at the Remington Matters Perth workshop, my interest is in the relationship between functionality and form. I believe the importance of locally designed and manufactured products to be paramount.