By founder David Gravina
The seeds of Digital Eskimo were sown in 2000 upon my return to Australia after a stint working and traveling in Europe. Arriving home I couldn’t help but notice the palpable changes that had occurred in the four years since the Howard Government had assumed power.
It was clear to me almost immediately that we had taken a huge leap backwards in most areas important to me such as human rights, indigenous issues, social equity and the environment. It was brought into even starker relief when the Olympics rolled into town. It was as if a facade had been erected for the international community and so myself and some friends decided to respond to the situation with some satire.
We launched the satirical website Unolympics.com to moderate success, garnering mainstream media coverage, 25,000 visits (back when that wasn’t too bad) and a legal challenge by the IOC that gave us more media attention and more site visits. We didn’t change the world but we did get some issues into the mainstream and this inspired my involvement in another social change endeavour, the refugee campaign ‘We Are All Boat People’.
I had been working with digital media – from music videos to corporate CD-ROMs – since the early 1990s and knew this technology would change everything somehow. In the summer of 2001, I decided to attempt to create an agency that would bring the power of design and digital technology to influence the issues of the day.
Graham Catt (our first MD) and Camile Blyth (a sharp, no-nonsense producer) joined me in the very early days of Digital Eskimo as directors – allowing me to focus on the creative side – and we slowly but surely built up a client base and a portfolio we were proud of.
We worked for the deep green organisations in the early days; NGOs like Greenpeace and The Greens gave us our first breaks that we’ll always be grateful for. We also branched out into the arts, encompassing the social and community aspects of sustainability with legendary organisations like Company B Belvoir and Complicité Theatre Company.
In 2005 we moved into our own studio and hired some very talented people, including Penny Hagen and Duncan Underwood, who helped grow the agency to over twenty people at its peak. As we grew we began work for top-tier NGOs like Amnesty International, Guide Dogs NSW and WWF Australia as well as larger corporates like Telstra BigPond, the Garvan Institute and premier arts organisations such as the Sydney Symphony and, more recently, Artbank.
Our fame grew with our involvement in high profile campaigns such as ‘Your Rights at Work’ which was credited with being the most significant reason behind the fall of the Howard Government, a particularly gratifying outcome for us. Other ground-breaking campaigns for Amnesty such as ‘Close Guantanamo’ and ‘Message In A Bottle’ were instrumental in eroding Howard’s traditional base. We continued to achieve great success in our strategic political campaign work in 2007 with the award winning ‘Raise The Bar’ campaign.
The agency now includes 15 talented specialists who practice our unique Considered Design methods in our new open plan sustainable studio on Foster St. in Surry Hills. Having just turned 8 in March 2009, we’re still a young company with much to do as we strive for a world that is socially equitable, ecologically sustainable and nurturing of the human spirit.
