Design Your Life with Vince Frost

Children of immigrants are often hard workers; they’re under pressure to live up to their parents’ dreams. And it’s often thought that creativity and hard work don’t go hand in hand. Jean Lin has proven quite the opposite. Growing up in Massachusetts she was aware she came from a different place to her friends. But she credits her different upbringing, one focused on valuin...

Is it better to start a business with a fully fleshed out plan? Or can passion be the driver for success? In the case of George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg, intent is everything. And you can achieve global success and excellence in your field “while still being fun and nice”. The partners in business and life founded their international creative design studio, Yabu Pushelberg, in 1980 wi...

Does having a social agenda matter when you’re a landscape architect? At first, you may not think so. But when you truly understand the impact a compassionate designer can make on the spaces we inhabit, the answer is clear. Sacha Coles is a Global Design Director at ASPECT Studios and founder of the design practice’s Sydney studio. As a global design influencer, Sacha leads projects of...

Being a change-maker in the humanitarian space is universally understood to be driven by the desire to help others. Equally, a love of travel and being motivated by difficult and hard to manage problems can be a huge benefit to working in the sector. Thanks to parents who were avid travellers, and her childhood home in Massachusetts being filled with foreign exchange students, Jocelyn Wyatt grew u...

We’re kicking off the new year by hearing from two internationally acclaimed experts in data-driven cross-sector insights and global market intelligence. We hope the takeaways from this conversation helps set you up for a dynamic 2025. When you’ve been in business together for 25 years, and life partners for 30, parameters are important. Almost as important as knowing the right paramet...

Designing sustainable tall buildings is no mean feat. Especially when the average lifespan of a commercial office building can be as little as 20 years. Oliver Tyler, Managing Director of WilkinsonEyre, one of the world’s leading architecture firms, spends his time doing exactly that. Delivering projects like the Battersea Power Station redevelopment and the award winning 8 Bishopsgate build...

This 150th episode, part two, of Design Your Life coincides with the 30th anniversary of Frost*collective. If you tuned in to Episode 150, you’ll know that over recent weeks, we’ve asked our audience to ask Vince anything. In this episode, you’ll hear his son Luca Frost ask Vince a selection of these questions and interview him about what motivated him to move his life and business to Australia, a...

Welcome to episode 150! This week, we’re turning the mic on our host. In a serendipitous turn of events, this 150th episode of Design Your Life coincides with the 30th anniversary of Vince Frost’s other baby, his strategic creative studio, Frost*collective. Over recent weeks, we’ve asked our listeners and social media followers to ask Vince anything, and today his eldest son, Luca Frost, is in the...

Collette Dinnigan has a storied history as one of Australia’s must successful fashion designers. Ever. But that’s just one chapter of her creative life.  Her adventurous spirit and love of colour, fabric and proportion make total sense in the context of her childhood. In the mid 70s, her father built a yacht and set sail from Durbin, South Africa for the world with his young family. When they sett...

Born in the small town of Hastings, New Zealand, Derek grew up in a working-class family with limited financial means and modest aspirations. His unexpected passion for photography ignited when he was a young bank teller and noticed a wedding photographer's bank statement, revealing the potential to make a living from photography. This serendipitous moment set Derek on a journey that has taken him...

In some families, the parents’ DNA instructs so clearly the way their children think and work that it’s impossible to deny the familial impact. Jason Bruges is the product of just this. His dad was a software and computer engineer, and his mother a trained artist. Both influenced where and how he came to be a multidisciplinary artist and designer. His eponymous Jason Bruges Studio is international...

In today’s economy, people are more considerate about what they’ll spend money on, retailers have to fight to hold or grow their market share. If there’s one person who knows this better than most, and will be the first to step into the ring, it’s Felicity McGahan. McGahan is the Group CEO of STRAND, the Australian handbags and luggage retailer, where she is leading a transformational vision for g...

What does it mean to exist professionally as an artist? Does being business minded compromise an artist’s creativity? If it’s a frank discussion on the topic you’re after, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran is the artist to have it with.  Nithiyendran is a Sri Lankan born contemporary artist whose work is often described as bold, hyperbolic, exaggerated and expressive. He’s achieved huge success in his dec...

Some people take a lifetime to find their true north, the thing they want to spend their days working on. That’s not the case for Sean Perkins. Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 70s, it wasn’t cool to get good grades. Even though he was smart, he flunked almost everything. Everything, but art. From a young age he was exposed to, “the future, all this incredible visual culture”, by way of Japane...

Not every path to success is a straight one. Mike Tosetto knows this firsthand. From growing up in Sydney’s Inner West as a skate kid who took photos with a disposable camera of the local street art — or, as her calls it, ‘mad graph’ — to living out back for two years at Ayres Rock Resort, to playing didgeridoo on stage at the Glastonbury music festival. His path has been anything but direct. Afte...

Hurricane Katrina and the Northern Rivers Floods may have happened over a decade apart and on opposite sides of the world. But the disasters have a lot in common. New Orleans and Lismore found themselves caught in the eye of the storm when the cities, both located for prosperity around a major waterway but on compromised ground, were inundated by water and devastated in the process.  The other thi...

How much does your environment shape your life, and what can city-makers do to make our lives better? Michael Stott has spent over 25 years crafting narratives for cities around the world, considering how they can be made better for the people who inhabit them. As Head of Cities and Places, Masterplanning & Urban Design at DBI, one of Australia’s foremost multidisciplinary design practices, he...

In life and in business, how big a part does luck play in our success? And are our good ideas really good at all? Professor Frederik Anseel is the newly appointed Dean of the University of New South Wales’ Business School and an expert in what works, and what doesn’t, in business. He’s spent his career researching organisational psychology, leadership, how to motivate people, how to treat colleagu...

In the 80s, Stiff Records, the British independent Punk Rock and New Wave record label, had an open-door policy. You could walk in and pick up posters, stickers and pin badges most days of the week. Jeremy Leslie was one of the kids doing just that. He’d catch the bus over to Notting Hill from the London College of Design to visit the shop. Originally, he was there for the music, but it was the st...

You could argue a lot of kids grow up with a love of drawing. This one knew he wanted to be an architect in high school. When his older brother brought home some Rotring pens, it all clicked. Domenic Alvaro is the Director and Global Design Leader at Woods Bagot, one of the world’s leading architecture firms. Drawing is a huge part of his professional practice to this day. He’s a long-term collabo...

Having a knock-out creative career five decades long is one thing. Setting up a charity to inspire the same creativity in the next generations is another. But the iconic British design duo, who are also husband and wife - Sir John Sorrell CBE and Lady Frances Sorrell CBE - have done just that. Frances and John started their lives in design both aged of 14 when, in different parts of London, they a...

People are considered lucky when they find something they’re skilled at and love, then make it their vocation. Growing up with a parent they’ve inherited that skill and passion from helps, especially when they’re exceptionally talented. Both Louise Olsen and Stephen Ormandy have parents who helped them on their path to a life shaped by creativity. Olsen’s father, John Olsen, who passed away aged 9...

Being driven is one thing. But being driven by trauma is another. It’s a special kind of motivation, and when combined with a competitive nature and natural feel for what an audience wants, great things can be achieved. Aidan Anderson is the Founder and CEO of The Local Project — the fastest growing design platform in the Asia-Pacific region. The platform is followed by design and architecture lov...

There’s an art to bringing history into modern creativity as more than a reference.  Sibella Court is adept at it. The creative director, author and interior and product designer has made a career out of creating with her love of history at the forefront. When you learn she grew up with two incredibly creative parents — a builder father skilled in transforming spaces and a mother who specialised i...

For a small country with a small population, the Danes are incredibly well-known on the global stage as highly skilled when it comes to design. In Viggo Haremst’s case, he knew he wanted to be an architect, like his father, very early in life. But he credits his Swedish mother for his commitment to process and detail. As a Design Director and Partner at the prominent Danish architecture firm Henni...