Daniel To, Emma Aiston garner international acclaim using Adelaide industrial design for simple fun objects
Daniel To and Emma Aiston with Daniel Emma creations such as a resin stationery holder (right) and other desktop obkects (top left) produced with United States design studio Field.
Images courtesy Daniel Emma
Former Adelaide industrial design students Daniel To and Emma Aiston are a duo behind the Daniel Emma studio based in Port Adelaide that’s won international acclaim for simple pared- back beautifully basic geometric forms creating something unexpected out of their sense of fun.
The met during their industrial design course – Aiston wanting initially to do architecture and To aiming for art studies. They started their design studio in 2008 – at the start of the global financial crisis – and lived at Rosewater, in the outer Adelaide suburb of Port Adelaide. The Adelaide design scene was small but rich in the support of “talented people who work with a variety of mediums and are all incredible supportive of what we do” in the studio, based out of the not-for-profit JamFactor design collective.
To and Aiston started by focusing on projects they wanted to do rather than what would make them a living. They benefited from influences of travel to Japan, where Emma had an uncle, and Hong Kong, where Daniel’s parents originated. Australia’s multicultural eclectic mix also influenced their work, described as “an unusual juxtaposition of materials, forms and colours – the magnificent squaring off against the mundane”.
From small simple geometric desk pieces, such as paperweights or a piece of timber hiding a magnet for objects such as paper clips, the duo moved into areas such as homewares for Sydney’s Object Gallery. They did a desk set for a United States company called Field and some more conceptual work for a group exhibition at the London design festival based around a fictional character called Vera.
They were asked to design a collection for Wallpaper magazine’s Handmade exhibition, shown in Milan at the furniture fair, and worked with French cosmetics company Guerlain on a dressing table set for some of their products. The designers’ signature elevation of the quotidian culminated in the unveiling of Hanging Out, installations for COS stores across Sydney and Melbourne.
