VMSD - January 2018 - 69

DESIGNER PROFILE
FIXTURES

RANDAL
HUNTINGTON
DESIGN DIRECTOR
PROJECT DUO

From a Land Down Under
Designer Randal Huntington may be Australian,
but today he's quite at home in Denver.

COU RT E SY OF PROJ E CT DU O /RA NDAL H U NT I NG TO N, DE NV E R

By John Ryan, European Editor
A retail design firm from Brisbane, Australia,
with outposts in Taiwan's Taichung and Basel, Switzerland, and an office in Denver. That, put very simply,
describes Project Duo, and given the name, it might
appear that the two brothers who founded the consultancy are spreading themselves thin.
They are not; it's just that having established
themselves in their antipodean homeland, Justin and
Randal Huntington parted, with the former staying in
Queensland to create and manage things in the Aussie studio. Randal headed for North America, pitching
up in Denver, where he now heads the U.S. office.
Randal still returns to Australia about four times
a year, and in the 18 months since setting up in Colorado, he has come to a few conclusions about his new
home: "I'm a great believer in keeping your finger on
the pulse globally," he says. "I came to the U.S., and in
some retail circles there seems to be limited effort
and value put on learning from the wins and lessons
of looking internationally. Everything we do is about
solving problems by asking the right questions and
applying innovative solutions. I'm really passionate
about great design, and I do believe that great design
can solve a lot of problems."
The design bug, in fact, hit Huntington from an
early age. "As a kid I would draw and design all the

time," he says. "While backpacking in the U.S. in my
late teens, a friend's mother told me that you could
actually make a living out of a pencil, paper and
an overactive mind." The outcome was a degree in
industrial design, which he started in 1989 at the
University of Wisconsin-Stout and then finished and
progressed to a graduate degree at the University of
Queensland, Australia.
Despite its relatively short life in the U.S., Project
Duo's self-belief is shared by others. Bike brand Cannondale (Bethel, Conn.) is featured prominently in
the agency's portfolio with store "kits" that have been
created to be transported in one shipping container to
the point of need, as well as work for Dick's Sporting
Goods (Coraopolis, Pa.), Shimano (Irvine, Calif.) and
Benotto bicycles (Torino, Italy), among others.
In the end, what comes across is an interior design
process founded as much in product creation as in the
fashioning of store environments.
"I always start the design process by developing a
design brief," Huntington explains. "Once I have that, I
go hunting for inspiration that lines up with the brief.
If that means to design an Italian restaurant, I need
to fly to Italy ... Great design is only great design if it
is judged against a brief, honed [in] from great questions." x

"Everything
we do is about
solving problems
by asking the
right questions
and applying
innovative
solutions ... I do
believe great
design can solve a
lot of problems."

VMSD.COM

JANUARY 2018

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