By Rebecca Singh
Acclaimed UK designer Kate Moross has been invited to speak at this year’s Semi Permanent design forum in Auckland on Friday and Saturday.
Moross has just arrived in the country from the US, and it seems New Zealand is not the only country the sort-after designer has been visiting.
“It does feel a little bit like I have been teleported because I have been on so many flights in the last 20 days,” she says.
At just 24 years old, it takes more than a little jet lag to unseat Moross.
She is already the head of her own design empire with clients like Cadbury and Topshop.
Earlier this year she co-directed the 'Audacity of Huge' video for Simian Mobile Disco, a job she got based on her very literal visual translation of the lyrics.
All the props for the video were sourced from online auction site eBay.
“Music and design are inseparable, so is everything else, fashion, art, they feel like they've been pulled apart in the last few decades and it’s about time we put them back together,” she says.
Music and art are intrinsically linked in Moross' work, in 2008 she was named at number 18 on NME’s list of future 50 innovators driving music forward.
Moross says innovation comes from just putting ideas into action.
“People often refer to these companies I’ve set up as like mammoth epic boardroom kind of things and they’re normally just me having an idea and putting them into reality,” she says.
One of those ideas was Isomorph Records, the record label she founded, she also finds time in her hectic schedule to design the album art for the label.
“So I work with people from Australia, America and the UK as well and from Europe just to kind of package their music and give it to not the masses but the very small audiences I have, she says.
“Which is kind of a backwards take on things but I think it’s the way the industry is going.”
Moross says when it comes to design there isn't a formal industry, just creative people who turn themselves into the career.
“Everything I do is just another extension of me, I’m not just an illustrator or a designer and I feel quite weird when I talk about myself in that way because ultimately I’m just exploding into different formats,” she says.
The next format: developing a design wiki providing simple advice to designers.
New Zealand designers won’t have to wait for wiki to launch, as they can get tips from the design guru this weekend at Semi Permanent 09.
