Saturday Indesign Highlights
The Panel, The Showrooms, and the Line I Haven't Stopped Thinking About
This past Saturday I spoke on a panel at CDK Stone, then spent the rest of the day moving through some of Sydney's best showrooms with people whose eye I genuinely trust. I came home with more in my notes app than I usually get from a full week of client meetings.
I said yes to the Saturday Indesign panel a few weeks ago, excited for my first time on a panel to discuss Milan and the 1970’s resurgence – which just happened to be my favourite era. By the time I was standing at CDK Stone on the day, coffee in hand, watching the room fill up, I was filled with some nerves but mostly excitement.
The Panel at CDK Stone
Tim from Habitus hosted the panel, and I was up there with Bradhly Le from Rizen Atelier, Michael Drescher Architect from DKO and Lara Head Buyer for CDK stone. These were people who I've admired from a distance for years, which made the whole thing feel less like a talk and more like a conversation I got to be part of. Surrounded by slabs of stone in every direction — that venue does not let you forget for a second what the conversation is actually about — we talked through where our clients' heads are at right now, how much more confident people have become about colour and material choices, and what we're each doing differently in our own practices this year compared to how we worked even two or three years ago.
What struck me most wasn't anything I said. It was a comment I heard.
The Line About Milan
A couple of the other panellists had just come back from Milan, and Lara from CDK mentioned, almost as an aside, that Italian stone suppliers are increasingly looking to Australia — to what we're doing with colour and how we're using marble — rather than the other way around. That we're not just following the lead anymore. In some rooms, we're setting it.
I sat with that for longer than the panel probably noticed. For most of my career, the reflex in Australian design was to look overseas first — Europe, always, as the benchmark, the place with the “real” taste. You'd bring a reference back from a trip and it carried automatic authority simply because of where it came from. Hearing that the direction might genuinely be reversing, even in pockets, even just for stone and colour, felt like permission to stop treating our own instincts as the safer, smaller choice. We've quietly gotten very good at this. I don't think we say that about ourselves often enough.
The Rest of the Day
Saturday Indesign Snapshot
After the panel wrapped, a group of us moved through the day together, and it turned into one of those rare stretches where you're not selling anything or defending a brief — just looking, properly looking, at what's actually being made right now.
Hali's rugs were first, and I could have stayed in that showroom for the whole afternoon. From there it was Reece to see Sussex's new tapware — the colours in that range are genuinely exciting. While we were there, Zuster walked us through how they build the custom vanities and mirrors they make for Reece — hearing a maker talk through their own process, the decisions and the compromises, is one of my favourite things to do in this industry and I don't get to do it nearly often enough.
Then on to Mobilia, where they'd set up the full Eames office experience and were running a draw for a trip to Spain. I will fully admit I had myself mentally packed before the winner was announced. We didn't get it — congratulations to whoever did, I hope you send photos.
We finished the day at Sarah Ellison's showroom over a genuinely competitive game of ping pong, which is not how I expected a design industry Saturday to end, and is exactly why I said yes to all of it in the first place.
Days like this remind me why I love this industry, even on the Saturdays it asks for. Thank you to Tim and Habitus for having me on the panel, and to CDK Stone, Hali, Reece, Sussex, Zuster, Mobilia and Sarah Ellison for such a generous, genuinely inspiring day.