Go to content Go to navigation

Semi-autobiographical details

Michael Honey

Michael has a long history in design-related fields: prior to founding Icelab with Pawl Cubbin, Michael spent three years as Interactive Director at ZOO, preceded by eight years as Creative Director at Green Advertising (tragically, bought out by adcorp). His skills include writing and strategic communication thinking; interactive design and development; writing, editing, and post-production for television and video; print design and production; and environmental/spatial/experience design.

Workwise, he’s currently interested in interface design, data-visualisation, and experience design. Out of hours, he’s into progressive and environmental politics, iterative/algorithmic art, urbanism, cycling, kayaking, and adventure racing. He reads way too much. Catch him online at michaelhoney.com.

Max Wheeler

A multitalented designer and artist with skills in photography, video, and interactive media, Max has worked with the Icelab team on projects across the web, print and television, for clients in government, retail, education and engineering. He is well-versed in the language of the web with particular focus on designing with web standards.

Max is able to combine his design and technical sensibilities to produce interactive pieces that fuse high-quality design with a robust technical backbone. He is proficient in Photoshop, Flash, After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Illustrator, Premiere and Dreamweaver and lies as he describes coding by hand as “fun”. He runs the popular photoblog site Makenosound.

Nathan McGinness

Nathan brings to Icelab experience in web design and development, motion graphics, video, music, programming, interface and flash design.

Nathan loves cricket, the Rabbitohs, generative art, books, vinyl and audiovisual synchronisation.

Daniel Edmonds

Daniel started Icelab with Michael in early 2006, after working with him for several years as both a colleague and client. Daniel’s work in the creative industries has seen him work with Michael on many successful projects, spanning websites, multimedia, exhibitions, television and audio production, and project management. Also a professional musician, Daniel’s career took him to Sydney in 2007 where he works as a musician, digital producer and project manager, providing Icelab with a Sydney presence when required.

Less mass, more energy

There’s a temptation to try to optimise your business by cranking out the same thing, efficiently, again and again. It’s the agribusiness model: get good at doing one thing, then do it as cheaply as you can in the greatest volume. Because you need to keep volumes high, you need to market to people who don’t actually want or need your product – and that’s just what it is, a generic product, the same as the last, the same as the next.

But agribusiness monocultures are boring and brittle: they’re prone to disease, and they’re easily wiped out when the market shifts.

We’re more like hunter-gatherers: we improvise, adapt, try new approaches. For us, a new project is an opportunity to explore different ways of doing things: to learn from the past, but also to try to build for the future. It means we need to have a broader range of skills because we do different things at different times. We stay agile and light. It’s more diverse, and it’s more interesting.

On our bookshelf

Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design

Michael Bierut writes, we read.

XS Green: Big Ideas, Small Buildings

Tiny buildings that make us happy. And the world too.

Design Like You Give a Damn

Low-cost projects from around the world providing shelter, health care, education, and access to clean water, energy, and sanitation. Do more with less.

Phaidon Design Classics

Essential 3-volume compendium of 999 industrially designed objects, in chronological order. Arrived in a box the size of a microwave.

Edward Tufte: Beautiful Evidence

Beautiful Evidence is.

Interesting

Small team, smart people

"I’ve seen it both ways. Working in a teams where the vast majority of the staff were multi-disciplined, and in teams where each section was clearly its own echo chamber to the point where it felt like the considerations of one team would always be ignored by the other. I can tell you that the former was not only infinitely more productive, but that the results were exponentially better."

Inventive Labs

Virginia came to visit recently. Props from one lab to another.

Helvetica

Not the font (that goes without saying!), but the film. We found it ideal for a typographically nerdy DVD night. Bring your own beanbag!

NZ field laboratory?

We wish that were true. But have a look anyway - it's a cool project.

BLDGBLOG

Your brain will effervesce with architectural goodness.

Icelab Pty Ltd
Unit 3/1, The Metropolitan,
1 Gordon St,
Canberra City ACT 2601 Australia

Telephone +61 2 6162 0241
Facsimile +61 2 6162 0242