Industrial designer, Mark Pennington, is a former student, tutor and head of the Wellington Polytechnic School of Design. He has had a long career in industrial design in New Zealand and has worked as a consultant to many of the leading design companies in the United Kingdom, Holland and the United States. He is currently design director at Formway Furniture.
THIS week 125 years of art and design education in Wellington is being celebrated at Massey University’s College of Creative Arts. Mark Pennington says it was his experience as a design school student that ensured design became more his way of life than just his occupation.
Pennington is continuously amazed at the quality of design being generated from New Zealand’s art schools. And he should know. As one of the country’s leading designers Pennington has designed everything from the earthquake house at Te Papa to gas heaters, picking up a few international design awards along the way.
He thinks there’s something about the kiwi psyche, that “have-a-go-mate” spirit that sets us apart from the rest of the world. And our isolation means we’re not entrenched in main market thinking.
“New Zealand’s an edgy place, it’s on the edge,” Pennington says. “We have a perspective that is fresh and clear, and so utterly desirable on a global scale.”
So wanted, that New Zealanders have gone on to head design teams at many international brands, including Nike, Apple and Porsche.
Pennington says our high flying designers are a product of a strong and unique culture within New Zealand’s design schools.
“It’s very human centred. It’s the desire to solve the problem from the human perspective rather than just design artefacts. It’s about meaningful design that contributes to society. It’s about understanding how the body moves, and how people behave, and how we can design for that.  This is embedded in the culture. It’s very impressive.
Pennington attributes much of this teaching philosophy to one man, Jim Coe, the man Pennington himself caught the bug from. As a young student in 1963 Pennington had entered Coe’s office thinking he would study architecture. Coe, head of the Wellington Polytechnic School of Design, convinced him otherwise.
“His office was such an innovative mix of furniture, skeletons, artwork and inventions. It was bristling with excitement. Coe spoke to me with such passion that I was seduced by it all and realised immediately it was what I wanted to do.”
Pennington studied at the design school as part of a group known as the Golden Year. He studied with the likes of Michael Smythe, Angus de Lane and Erica Duncan.
“We were fortunate enough to be tutored by some of New Zealand’s great figures in art and design, like of John Drawbridge. We shared Jim Coe’s attitude of finding human based solutions to problems and that is what continues to make our design schools unique.  We bring better design for a better world.”
And it’s the sort of edge we need to pay our way in the world. Pennington believes design can contribute hugely to New Zealand’s foreign exchange figures.
“We have a world class design capability and we should be levering off that. New Zealand should be doing more exporting and earning foreign exchange. Design should be at the core of that and could be our salvation. We certainly have the talent,” Pennington says.


Artist honoured:
New Zealand visual artist and design school tutor, the late John Drawbridge, is being honoured with a scholarship launched in his name.  
The John Drawbridge Scholarship will be launched next Wednesday as part of the celebrations marking 125 years of art and design education in the capital. The inaugural scholarship has been won by illustrations major student, Emma Williams, of the Massey College of Creative Arts.
Drawbridge, who died in 2005, worked in a variety of media, including intaglio paints, oils, watercolours and large scale murals. During a career spanning 50 years he completed several major public words including the 15 metre mural on 10 large canvas panels for New Zealand House in London, and the three dimensional aluminium mural in parliament’s beehive.
Drawbridge returned to New Zealand in 1964 to teach print making and creative design at the Wellington School of Design. He retired in 1990.
The John Drawbridge Scholarship has been funded through the sales of the book John Drawbridge, and a percentage from the sale of the artist’s prints.