Meet Minty, Senior Designer

In our Interview with an Expert series, we’ll be shining a spotlight on our team members who are – you guessed it – experts in their fields. In our first interview, in honour of International Women’s Day this Tuesday 8 March 2022, we’ve chosen to chat with our kickass Senior Designer, Eliza Minty (known as Minty around the office).

Tell us, what’s your role at Tomorrow in a nutshell?

I design brand identities and roll out the design across all collateral (billboards, websites, brochures etc.), and I also support the rest of our studio with their work.

What’s your favourite thing about being a designer?

That buzzing feeling once you get into the flow.

I love playing with ideas and experimenting: being focused and in the zone, instead of fighting indecision – “Hmm, does that work? Is that right? Should that go here?”

You just keep working, making and going and going and going until STOP… you’ve emptied your creative tank out onto the now-full page. You take a breath, make a cup a tea, and come back to look at your creations with fresh eyes to filter out the winners from the duds.

You’ve worked on a lot of projects in your time here – which one are you most proud of?

Winning Gold at Melbourne Design Awards last year for our work on Balmoral Quay.

How do you make each project feel unique and separate from competitor projects?

Firstly, research. You’ve got to know what the competition is doing before you can work out how to stand out. And then I look for the Unique Selling Proposition (my advertising degree hard at work there!): What makes this project different? Why are people going to fall in love with living here? Answering these questions gives me a pretty good framework to start working from and it gives me a good reference point to come back to if I’m not sure a direction or concept is working.

Did someone inspire you to be a designer? And where do you find your inspiration now?

My go-to resource for inspiration is Brand New, which is a curation of brand identity work across all industries and locations. As a junior, reading it really helped me learn about others’ design processes and how to critically look at design to see if it works/does its job rather than just being preeeeeetty. But now I just love seeing what other amazing work people are getting out into the world.

What’s your favourite brand, from a design perspective?

Hmm, this is a tricky one. I’d say Nasa, with the original ‘worm’ logo. It only lasted from 1975-1992 before they reverted back to the original ‘meatball’ logo (yes, that is 100% what they called it) from the ‘Atomic Age’ of design (think the Jetsons and those 1950s starburst wall clocks).

Even though the ‘worm’ logo design is almost 50 years old, it still feels futuristic and exciting, like it should be in a sci-fi movie set 1000 years into the future. Or perhaps I’m just a sucker for mid-century design and science fiction.

Left: ‘worm’ logo Right: ‘meatball’ logo

Name a program/work tool you couldn’t live without.

Pen and paper. Can’t beat the classics.

What’s your go-to song/podcast when you need to get in the zone at work?

TOFOP. Mindless mindfulness podcast with Wil Anderson and Charlie Clausen.

Favourite design-related meme?

What’s your advice for aspiring graphic designers?

Be kind.

Work hard (but take breaks so you don’t burn out).
Learn about things not necessarily related to design (it will all feed into your creativity and connect in new and interesting ways.)

Finally, if you weren’t a graphic designer, what would you be?

Palaeontologist. Because dinosaurs are awesome.

Stay tuned for further posts in the series to meet more members of our team!