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Australian houses, from architectural masterpieces to suburban family homes, Victorian terraces, mid-century marvels, coastal shacks, city apartments, and everything in between.
Award-winning Australian architecture, inspiring homes, and interviews with Australia’s top architects.
Award-winning Australian interior design, inspiring homes, and interviews with Australia’s top designers.
In depth features on Australia’s most beautiful gardens and landscape design.
Studio visits with Australia’s most talented creatives, from artists to architects, ceramicists to stylists, furniture makers to lighting designers.
Studio visits with Australia’s top artists, and unmissable art exhibitions in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and beyond.
Weekly recipes and meal ideas from our favourite cooks, authors and foodies.
Unique travel destinations, design-led accomodation and day trip ideas in Australia and New Zealand.
Do you remember your first digital camera!? It was amazing, you could actually see the photo you had just taken, instantly! Unfortunately you could also see you had both your eyes closed in the family reunion photo, leading to the inevitable awkward reassembly of three generations of relatives to retake the photo. This time, another photo was tarnished by a younger cousin captured doing unsolicited bunny ears on your grandma. DELETE. So another photo, and another, and another was taken until the ‘perfect’ photo was eventually snapped, one where everyone’s smiles were strained after so many deleted outtakes. Then we moved to the camera phone, and now Instagram, where a Valencia filter can fix pretty much everything. Well, today’s New Kids on the Blog candidates’ old school approach to photography takes us back to pre-digital days, where every photo, bunny ears and all, is finite.
Introducing Hillvale, an independent photo lab based in Brunswick by two mid-twenties pals Jason Hamilton and Andy Johnson. The pair met while studying Graphic Design at RMIT in 2007. ‘We both bonded over photography, film especially, and have since pursued it both as recreation and a commercial exercise,’ recalls Andy. Hillvale officially launched in August last year, after this industrious pair spent about two years gathering equipment and securing a location.
‘The idea came about when we learned that Jason's old photo lab (where he worked while in high school) were decommissioning their analogue photographic equipment. Soon enough we found ourselves in my parent's garage with a C41 processing machine. After a few weeks of research we had sourced suppliers of chemistry and had it running,’ says Andy.
Jason and Andy originally ran their photo lab with the intention of processing their own and their close friend’s film, but soon enough, word of mouth spread and their services became in demand. Keeping things a little Gen Y, Hillvale doesn’t operate like a traditional shopfront business, instead they have ‘Dropbox Locations’. Basically you take your film to one of these locations (listed here), fill out a ‘job bag’ with all of your details, and the boys will collect the film. The magic then happens at Hillvale HQ, where the pair process your film, then scan and upload print ready images for you to access via your email. They then send your processed negatives back you in the mail, and all this for just $8.00 per roll.
After just under 6 months in operation, Hillvale has snowballed in popularity. Andy reckons it's Melbourne's supportive creative community that has really propelled their fledgling business. 'Having been open a few months, there's definitely a community feel developing, and we've had the opportunity to be exposed to some great people and work' he says. 'It's great to know you can take a picture, we can process / scan it, then that picture may be used in an upcoming group show or zine shortly after. We feel pretty lucky to be surrounded by people who create such abundant opportunity.'
The Design Files acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we work, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to Elders past and present.
First Nations artists, designers, makers, and creative business owners are encouraged to submit their projects for coverage on The Design Files. Please email bea@thedesignfiles.net
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