Digital Eskimo » Awards

DE’s founder amongst Sydney’s most influential

Duncan Underwood — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 09:25:26 +0000

Our Founder and Creative Director, David Gravina, was today named (for the second time) among Sydney’s top 100 most influential people by the Sydney Morning Herald’s the(sydney)magazine.

The article recognised the work of David (and the crew here at Digital Eskimo!) on the Your Rights at Work and Raise the Bar campaigns and mentions our awesome online campaign platform, Do Gooder. The awards recognise people across a broad range of disciplines and pursuits and then categorises them accordingly, with Dave garnering a slot in the appropriately named ‘Altruist’ category.

From the article:

David Gravina’s design firm, Digital Eskimo, has driven successful online campaigns like Your Rights at Work and Raise the Bar. Now he’s giving his secrets away. In July, DE launched Do Gooder, a platform that allows other campaigners to build websites using DE’s most effective tools.

It’s already having an impact: the NewsStand campaign used its Do Gooder site to get 3500 people emailing their MPs about a national media inquiry; just days later, an inquiry was announced. Gravina, 41, tasted his first such win when he was just 10, succesfully lobbying his local council to build a BMX track. “I hope Do Gooder will contribute to people experiencing the power i felt when the BMX track was announced”, he says.

Vote for DE in the 2011 Business Awards

Sally Robertson — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 23:57:57 +0000

So we’re up for nomination in the City of Sydney 2011 Business Awards. And it’s really exciting because it means we’ve been recognised as a business that’s positively contributing to the community & helping to make our city more green, global and connected.

May seem like an unlikely fit for a design firm in Surry Hills (and to be honest we’re not that into competitions and rarely enter), but if you look a little closer at who we are and what we do, you’ll begin to understand why this one makes sense.

If you already love us then vote for us now! (it takes a few seconds and you’ll go in the draw to win $1500!)

If you need more convincing .. read on …

We use design to positively change society (and the world)

Our mission as a company is to harness design and technology to help change the world.

Over the years, we’ve worked with some of Australia’s most respected and progressive organisations to design projects that have had a positive impact on people and the planet.

We’re especially proud of the client work that we’ve done to change our local community for the better. One such example is ‘Water Worx’, the outcome of a recent collaboration with the Powerhouse Museum to educate children about the challenges associated with managing Sydney’s water supply with a growing population. Another is ‘Reduce Your Footprint’, an initiative that seeks to reduce the ecological footprint of residents living in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney (which are sadly some of the biggest in the world!).

We’ve also begun to engage with the Sydney design community as we seek to understand how we can better harness our creativity to solve some of the messier problems facing the world.

We’re passionate about re-localising and reconnecting communities

We created and are ongoing supporters of The live local Foundation – an initiative that encourages people to take more time to connect and engage with their community. The project provides a forum for local residents to document their experiences and adventures (‘experiments’) meeting neighbours, discovering neighbourhoods, supporting local economies, saving energy, water and much more.

Over 170 experiments have been documented so far, and hundreds of active community members, largely from the Sydney area but some as far as the UK, have been using words, pictures and videos to show how they improve and enjoy their communities.

We’re passionate about sustainability and building a green(er) Sydney

If you’ve ever visited our studio, you’ll be aware of the fact that it’s been designed with sustainable principles throughout . For example, there are worm farms in our garage, the floors and desks are made from bamboo, we grow our own herbs and buy organic, locally sourced produce and all our furnishings are procured according to the strictest of sustainability requirements . It makes it a lovely place to work, but also means that we have a relatively low carbon footprint (something which we measure and offset every year). In fact we’ve offset the entire history of our company since 2001.

We hold frequent events that bring together people with a passion for design and sustainability to watch a film, have a lively chat and take away new ideas to spread through our community.

We’re proud to return a portion of our profits to progressive organisations, campaigns and causes as part of our commitment to promoting sustainable communities. We are a founding member and ongoing supporter of the green networking drinks greenUps which has helped grow the community of passionate progressive ‘green’ people in Sydney, something we felt the city really needed. In its third year, crowds of up to 300 meet to discuss sustainability, share ideas and inspire each other.

We’re passionate supporters of Sydney’s cycling community

It won’t come as a shock to our friends, but bikes are an integral part of who we are. We actively encourage cycling for daily commuting purposes amongst our staff (all staff are given a company bike when they join the company).

What’s more, we’re keen for more Sydneysiders to embrace the cycling culture. So in addition to initiatives like the Keep it Wheel ride last year which saw hundreds of riders connect with local businesses on Sydney’s new bike lanes, we have a bike repair workshop under our studio that we’ve made available for any cyclists who live or work in the community to use if their bike needs a bit of love.

We do these things because we’re passionate about making the world a better place and believe that effective, widespread change must come from the bottom up as well as the top and we need to start (and ultimately end) at a local level. Designers have a central role to play in helping society craft creative responses to the challenges of our times and Digital Eskimo is at the front lines collaborating, prototyping and ultimately making change happen.

So vote for us !

Mixed mobility transport

Our ecofootprint info graphic scores again

Sally Robertson — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 22:12:06 +0000

Digital Eskimo has again been recognised for creative excellence in visual communication design by the Australian Graphic Designer’s Association (AGDA).

Last Saturday night, our “2009 Interactive Ecological Footprint” received a Distinction Award in the Digital Media category at the official awards ceremony, which was held in Brisbane. All of the finalists will be published in the AGDA annual showcase book and be part of an exhibition that will tour nationally and internationally to New York later this year.

Big ups to Duncan Underwood, our Director of Operations & Sustainability along with Jeremy Epstein and Scott Nolan who worked on the ecofootprint info graphic last year – well done guys!

(We’re currently in the process of calculating our ecofootprint for 2009-10 so stay tuned shortly for the results)

live local nominated for two AIMIA Awards

David Gravina — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:00:45 +0000

We’re thrilled to announce that the online presence of the live local project has been listed as a finalist in the 16th AIMIA Awards.

The site has been nominated in both the Best Non-profit or Government and Best Science, Health or Environment categories.

The AIMIA Awards are Australia’s longest running and most prestigious Interactive Media awards and it’s fantastic to be recognised for our work on a low budget not-for-profit project such as live local.

Big ups to Piers Dawson-Damer who had the vision and courage to invest in the project. Also the project team here at Digital Eskimo; John Macfarlane, Jeremy Epstein, Chris Gaul and everyone in the project team for all their hard work. I should also thank all of the live local community who are what it’s all about in the end. (We haven’t won yet so I’ll hold off continuing the acceptance speech until the awards night perhaps!)

Top 100 Creative Catalyst award

admin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:51:42 +0000

We’re very happy to announce that Dave Gravina, our Principal and Creative Director, has been voted as one of Sydney’s Creative Catalysts, part of the Creative Sydney Festival which runs from May 27 to June 12.

The Top 100 Catalysts list focuses on people with original, creative ideas who are giving inspiration to others in their field.

Dave has been given the opportunity to speak on 8pm, Wednesday June 10 at the MCA for the Creative Catalyst Showcase – Changing Sydney about Digital Eskimo’s project live local, a new online community resource that enables users to share their experiments in living locally and sustainably.

The Raise The Bar campaign team was also recognised for their successes in changing Sydney’s bar culture and John Wardle spoke about the campaign at the Space Race event, 6pm May 28 at the MCA. Our client, friend and bird of a feather Kate Bezar has also made a catalystic appearance in the Top 100 with her magazine Dumbofeather, congratulations!

The (Top 100) Sydney’s most influential award

David Gravina — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 01:15:33 +0000

Just prior to Christmas John Wardle and myself were honoured to be included in the Sydney magazine’s (Top 100) most influential people in Sydney. The award was in recognition of our work on the Raise The Bar campaign in 2007/2008, so i would argue its not so much an award for two influential men but an influential campaign.

I’d like to recognise the core team who were behind the campaign as they played important roles in making it so wildly successful. They are Adele Winteridge, Jonathon Larkin, Mimi Daraphe, Andrew Cox and Damian Cerini.

As I’ve said before many, many more people (including thousands of RTB members) made this happen so once again cheers to you all.

Read the full article overleaf

The Article …
Traditionally, Sydneysiders have been quick to provide evidence of their city’s superiority over the southern pretender. The theory came unstuck, however, whenever anyone mentioned Melbourne’s vibrant, quirky, small bar scene. While we were all lamenting our bad luck over copious beers in vast, characterless pubs, John Wardle, 38, a musician and lobbyist who had toiled behind the scenes on cultural planning policy for years, and Dave Gravina, 38, founder and creative director of web design firm Digital Eskimo, were building a grassroots campaign, appropriately called Raise The Bar.

The idea was to rid Sydney of prohibitively expensive licensing laws that meant that the right to serve alcohol while providing any form of entertainment cost $60,000. Thanks to Wardle and Gravina, that same license now costs 500 bucks.

The pair met weekly to develop a strategy that included a chardonnay-sipping sit-in outside Parliament House and culminated in Wardle lobbying key players inside Parliament House just moments before the new bill was passed on July 1. Although the ink on those reforms is barely dry, Gravina says he knows of a number of players preparing to open – including a few experienced operators south of the border. “Conversations will be easier in venues without pokies, plasma screens and happy hours,” he says.

Raise the Bar wins SMAC Award!

admin — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:00:19 +0000

We’re delighted to announce that last night the Raise The Bar campaign won the SMAC in Your Face award at the first Sydney Music, Art & Culture Awards presented by FBI Radio and Time Out magazine. The awards, presented at the Opera House, focus on Sydney’s creative community and are about celebrating the “interesting, the ingenious, the clever”.

Congratulations to all the winners on the night which represented some of Sydney’s most creative young talent (a special congrats to Fergus Linehan who pipped us at the post for SMAC of the Year!).

I should take this opportunity to thank all of those wonderful people who made the campaign such a huge success – and forgive me if I forget anyone .. our members who sent over 7,500 virtual drinks, gave money and made hundreds of calls to Liberal leader Barry O’Farrels office the night before the vote in Parliament, Clover Moore, Graham West MP, John Thorpe (ex AHA President, aka the villain!), FBI Radio, Spanton Media, Walter at Melt and Cedric at Cafe Lounge, Tom and the team at Mooball, Kate Bezar at Dumbofeather, Two Thousand, Kripy, Musicland, James Squire, Burrundulla Wines and of course all the RTB crew who put so many hours into the campaign.

Which incidentally isn’t over, stay tuned shortly for the next phase of the campaign …

Raise the Bar wins SMAC Award!

David Gravina — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 01:16:11 +0000

From left: Dave Gravina, Andrew Cox, Adele Winteridge, Jonathon Larkin and John Wardle accpet the prize

Congratulations to all the winners on the night which represented some of Sydney’s most creative young talent (a special congrats to Fergus Linehan who pipped us at the post for SMAC of the Year!).

Which incidentally isn’t over, stay tuned shortly for the next phase of the campaign …

Hey Joe walks away with 2 awards

David Gravina — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 02:16:51 +0000

We walked away with 2 Finalists awards for our Hey Joe campaign at the Australian Graphic Design Association’s 2008 Biannual Awards recently. The campaign has been a great success; ensuring we stay front of mind within our community and has delivered a steady stream of very talented and capable people to the igloo to have a crack at becoming digital eskimos.

The awards honoured creativity and execution and were for Self Promotion and Promotion to the Creative Industry. Special mention should go to Penny who oversaw the project, Chris Gaul who designed the ‘Babushkimo’ dolls and the campaign look and feel, Anja on flash coding/animation, the team at Mooball, led by Tom Cameron who coded the backend referral engine (we can track who forwards to whom to confirm who to pay when we hire someone) and Duncan Underwood who heads up the HR activities here at Digital Eskimo.

Apologies to Eskimo Joe for the blatant name rip-off …

The year starts with …. another award!

David Gravina — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 22:47:24 +0000

It was a nice surprise this morning to receive an email from our client at the ACTU, which our alert (but not alarmed!) readers will know commissioned us to create the Your Rights at Work website, to let us know we’d won another award for the site (that makes three!).

This time it was from Labour Start, for Labour Website of the Year. In their words:

“The winner this year is Your Rights at Work (Australia) — a website that contributed enormously to the ouster of the viciously anti-union John Howard government a few weeks ago. Congratulations to the Australian Council of Trade Unions on a great campaign and a great website.”

We were pretty happy with our award tally last year receiving two awards (having not entered any awards ourselves that was pretty good – some agencies have teams of people applying for awards and through sheer effort pick up a few each year, we’re a bit busy doing great work for our clients so tend not to bother).

Though we love the accolades I can’t help but add that the greatest reward of all for us on this project was to know that it played a pivotal role in the resounding defeat of John Howard and his right wing Liberal Party in the recent Federal Election.