2008 | BOOK DESIGN FOR WORTH THE WAIT | CLIENT: JASON STEVENS

Emerging Talent No. 3: Kevin Finn
Creative director Kevin Finn likes simple design that accommodates multiple interpretations of the core ideas being expressed. He finds the nature of simplicity provides the opportunity for multi-layering meaning. “I’m afflicted with logical thinking and have a very healthy respect for ideas,” admits Finn. “Now, that may sound clichéd, simplistic or plain dumb, but I honestly find it difficult to produce work that doesn’t stem from concrete thinking informed by an understanding of the material that I am trying to communicate.”

Finn’s clients and projects vary considerably, but this has been by intention. “A year and a half ago, when I moved to Kununurra, a remote town in the north of Western Australia, I set a challenge for myself,” he says. “I wanted to see if what we so often say is actually true: ‘In our industry, we can work from anywhere.’ Living in a remote part of Australia certainly puts that to the test.” Yet Finn has succeeded in working with local, national and international clients. He is especially thankful for the opportunity to work with local Aboriginal communities and is particularly proud of this work.

Prior to moving to Australia, Irish-born Finn worked in Dublin and New Zealand with top design studios. He then spent seven years as joint creative director at Saatchi Design, Sydney, winning national and international recognition, including awards from D&AD (the U.K.-based organization Design And Art Direction) and The Type Directors Club (TDC). Following this, he started Finn Creative in Kununurra when his wife took a position with Argyle Diamond Mine there. However remote his home, though, he is active in the international design community, regularly speaking on panels and judging design competitions.

Finn is also founder, editor and designer of Open Manifesto—the first and currently the only Australian-based journal of critical writing on graphic design, with contributors such as Bob Gill, Stefan Sagmeister, Edward de Bono, Vince Frost, Peter Saville, Steven Heller and Noam Chomsky. “Kevin is a keen entrepreneur of ideas,” says Steven Heller, cochair, MFA Designer as Author program at the School of Visual Arts. “I feel he’s as sophisticated and original as you can get. In addition to his more corporate approaches, his Open Manifesto is a testament to design erudition. Hopefully, it is just the first of many design discourses he will start. It’s worth watching what comes next.” British design critic Rick Poynor, on the blog DesignObserver.com, called Open Manifesto “an ambitious bid to enter Emigre and DotDotDot territory.”

Thinking about what’s next in his career, Finn says, “All I do know is that, wherever I am in the future, I will probably seek to be involved in something creative that requires a genuine thinking process and some sort of creative expression. Essentially, I’d be happy to simply continue learning new things from new adventures and new challenges.”
www.finncreative.com.au | www.openmanifesto.net