Behind the making of the Australian of the Year Awards trophies
The State and Territory recipients of the 2019 Australian of the Year awards have had their contributions to the nation commemorated with glass trophies designed and created by the ANU Glass Workshop.
Staff, students and alumni were involved in the designing and making, led by workshop head Associate Professor Richard Whiteley.
The workshop, which sits with the ANU School of Art and Design, also produced the glass trophies for the State, Territory and national awards in 2018.
“The opportunity for us to celebrate the achievements of other Australians is for me the highlight of Australia Day,” Associate Professor Whiteley says.
“Here are people who’ve helped take the country forward, and that’s a nice thing to acknowledge and celebrate.”
To Associate Professor Whiteley, the awards also represent an applied teaching opportunity: “The students learn how work with a high profile client who has very specific needs. We engineer the creative and production processes so that students can be involved in all aspects, including design manufacturing, and we run the whole project as an extra-curricular learning opportunity.”
In addition to his contributions, a number of the glass workshop’s research students were involved in making the awards this year: Namdoo Kim, Yusuke Takemura and Fenella Bryant. Recent Honours graduate Cathy Newton was a key person working on and managing the project. Across campus, Ella Sayers and the ANU Makerspace printed the 3D prototypes, which provided a physical representation of the design, which the team evolved during the process.
“We wanted the awards to be bold, confident and elegant,” Associate Professor Whiteley says.
“But there was also what we didn’t want: we didn’t want lots of layered symbolism or complexity. We wanted a freshness and confidence within the awards.”
He said the biggest difference in the look of the awards for 2019 was the tessellated back of the awards that incorporated a reference to the Southern Cross.
“Last year’s awards had the faceting to represent the multi-dimensional history of our country,” Associate Professor Whiteley says. “When we really started to think about it, we felt that just from the perspective of migration, there are many parts of our society – and they’re symbolised by the new multi-faceted surface.
Behind the new design
Associate Professor Whiteley: “Blue is something we’ve continued from last year which we thought was really effective. Blue symbolises the great blue Southern sky of our country.”
“This year’s design is much more layered. Last year’s had a series of steps that were more direct. This year we wanted this to be more of a fabric with subtle undulations, we felt this was a stronger metaphor for the different facets of our society.
The glass itself has a high refractive index – so there’s a sense of distortion and dimension that you get through looking at the glass, which is why we kept the front flat and embellished the back.
We’ve again split the inscription between the back and the front of the glass so there’s a stronger sense of dimension and layer.”
“We looked for something that made the awards quintessentially Australian. We thought the colour carried that last year, but wanted to add an element that made it specific to Australia without being too literal.
We thought the symbolism of the Southern Cross, shown through the constellation and embedded in the tessellated surface, was a clear reference but also subtle.”
“The colour on the corner of each award is given to us by the Australia Day Committee. They have a colour classification for each award.
We worked with them to match each category colour to the colour of the glass and use that as an accent in the corner of the award; which is a piece of another coloured glass that’s strategically placed and cast into the award when it’s formed.”