Founder & Creative Director
Born in Melbourne and educated in Systems Design at Monash University, David moved to Sydney in the early 90s. In his early twenties he set up a multimedia and music video production company and freelanced for many years in user interface design, programming and producing roles for various organisations including Fairfax, the ACTU and Fosters.Towards the end of the decade he upped stumps and travelled through Europe, eventually settling in London where he continued to freelance at several brand and digital agencies while enjoying European beer and English winters.
Returning to Australia in 2000, David began to combine his creative thinking with a new found passion for social and environmental issues he had acquired whilst travelling. While working at a dot com start-up he moonlighted with a team of media mischief makers to create the ‘Unolympics‘ – a satirical take on the Sydney Olympics. Another collaboration involved projecting an image of a tall ship with the words ‘Boat People’ emblazoned below 12 metres high onto the Opera House, garnering mainstream media attention for the refugee issue in the process.
Encouraged by the success of these early experiments in using design to make a difference, David launched Digital Eskimo in 2001.
Career highlights include the award winning Your Rights at Work and Message In a Bottle campaigns for the ACTU and Amnesty International respectively. In 2007 the grassroots Raise The Bar campaign, co-founded by David and designed at Digital Eskimo, was pivotal in successfully replacing draconian liquor licensing laws in NSW. In 2008, Sydney Magazine named him as one of Sydney’s Top 100 most influential people, an accolade that still amuses him to this day.
He is a founding member of green networking event greenUps, a founder and director of the live local Foundation, and holds a seat on Object Gallery’s 2015 Creative Advisory Board.
David can be followed online through our blog, or on Twitter or on occasion at his personal blog, The Gravy Train.
Learn more about the history of Digital Eskimo
