![\"Bryon](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.formtrends.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/bryon-fitzpatrick_self-portrait.jpg?ssl=1\" "\\"Bryon")
<\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> Born in Nelson, New Zealand, in February 1931, Bryon\u2019s father moved the family to Australia soon after. As a property businessman and hotel owner, he thought his son should follow in his footsteps and didn\u2019t approve of Bryon\u2019s penchant for design, nor did he understand why someone would want to study it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a new thing in the 1950s,\u201d says Leon Fitzpatrick, the youngest of Bryon\u2019s eight children with his wife Philippa, whom he met at art school. \u201cEven more so in Australia, which was so isolated from the rest of the world. It was a very unusual thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Bryon persevered. He enrolled and initially started studying architecture at the Queensland Technical College in Brisbane, Australia. He later became interested in Industrial Design after reading about it and decided to shift into that direction.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn’t exist at that school, so he went to the head of school and said that’s what he wanted to do,\u201d says Leon. \u201cThey assembled the course themselves from multiple different disciplines, which also included courses from the US.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe literally pioneered the study of Industrial Design here in Brisbane.\u201d<\/p>\n
Upon graduating from University, Bryon got a job at BMC in Sydney, where he worked until a better position at Ford in Germany came along. He applied and got it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is where the rendering, perspective and sheer speed and accuracy of his skills developed — doing cars.\u201d Leon says he traced the skillset back to the size and scale of the renderings that his father was tasked to do in honing his talent.<\/p>\n
Bryon later applied these techniques when designing products and motorcycles, such as the famous Triumph Trident and BSA Rocket III he penned during his time at British design firm, Ogle Design.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was back then when Industrial Design was a broad field and he felt if the core skills were applied, why stick to one thing? He fostered this skill and to the day he died was still doing sketches, canson renderings, line drawings, doodles, everywhere and anywhere there was a blank sheet of paper, napkin, wall…\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> Professor Fitzpatrick\u2019s incredible ability led him into a product design career that spanned decades, first with Danish design firm Bernadotte and Bjorn and later at Design Ink, a design consultancy he founded in the 1980s.<\/p>\n
He worked with clients in the automobile industry, industrial equipment and electronics industries; he designed glassware, photographic equipment and furniture. The projects born from Fitzpatrick\u2019s pen earned him European Gold Medals for Design Excellence and gained Australian Design Award recognition. In 2013, he was inducted into the Design Institute of Australia Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n
After serving for six years as Chairman of Transportation Design at CCS, Fitzpatrick became interim chair at the reputable design school and was named Professor Emeritus in fall of last year. Most recently he was retained by GM\/PATAC to teach his illustration and rendering skills to the automotive giant\u2019s designers in Asia, Australia and India, conducting group workshops and one-on-one tutorials.<\/p>\n
But it was the speed at which he could work that earned him the nickname \u2018The Drawing Machine\u2019, which was first used during the 1984 Artistcare workshop that toured Australia; footage of which is shown in the video above.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would guess it was Imre Molnar [former CCS Provost who passed away in 2012] that would have coined that since he was the instigator of the workshop and so much else in dad’s life,\u201d Leon recalls. \u201cHe was the catalyst to dad’s drawing machine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Professor Fitzpatrick\u2019s legacy will not only live on in the design community and amongst the designers and artists he mentored and guided, but also within his family. Unlike Bryon, his children all followed in their father\u2019s footsteps and continue to work in creative and multidisciplinary fields of industrial design, architecture, fashion design, writing, jewelry design, art curation, illustration, graphic design, fine art & sculpture and filmmaking. Their professions are varied, but it\u2019s clear that Bryon inspired many people to create in many ways.<\/p>\n
\u201cMostly it’s the pursuit of perfection, which we all seem to have inherited,\u201d says Leon. \u201cHe never rested on his laurels and was always focused on not what you’ve done, but what you can do.\u201d<\/p>\n