Paul Justin | Email | Website

Where and what did you study and what year did you graduate?
Bachelor of Industrial Design, 1997, RMIT.

Where did you head after graduating?
I established a business partnership to bring to market a product. This led to me winning Young Victorian Designer of the Year 1999. Looking for more experience, I then established the in house design studio for Buzz Products, designing an endless variety of objects and packaging for airline, beauty, fast food and FMCG clients, to name but a few.

When did you launch your own business?
I established my own studio in March 2007.

What motivated you to start your own business?
My sketchbooks told me to do it. The ultimatum was to breathe life into the ideas contained within their pages or suffer an eternal barrage of papercuts.

How would you describe your business to someone who didn’t know you?
Paul Justin Pty Ltd is founded on the strength of ideas and the idiosyncrasies of the human experience. The scope of projects is broad spanning furniture, toys, fine objects and domestic goods.

How would you describe the products you design to someone who hadn’t seen them?
Whilst my works are varied in use, there are threads which hold them together. I am interested in finding simple solutions with ingenuity and adaptation and modularity of products. I also want to instill a relationship between product and person and aim to make significant but incremental steps towards sustainable practice, in line with the principles of Cradle to Cradle.

What are the most challenging parts of being a designer running a small business?
Taking an objective curatorial stance on which ideas are worth pursuing. Also taking time from the meditation of design to nurture the business side of the studio.

What inspires your design projects?
Pure geometry, observations of my children at play and natural rhythms. When I look at an object I try to see both the vase and the faces that make it.

What are the next steps for you?
The coming years should see a number of my ideas produced. I am currently in promising discussions with some companies on the fate of a few.

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