Isabelle Bates

My design philosophy revolves around the user experience. I believe that great design is not only about aesthetics but also about functionality and ease of use. By combining these elements, I strive to create designs that not only look good but also solve real-world problems.

Hush

Hush is an interactive, geolocation-based app that takes users on a unique bar-hopping adventure through hidden speakeasies, blending a gamified treasure hunt with real historical narratives across 12 secret locations. Each bar is unlocked through clues, using AR, audio, and visual elements to immerse users.

City Sprouts

In this project, I developed a social media campaign to promote urban farming and regenerative agriculture, raising public awareness of sustainable practices through engaging content across Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. The campaign included weekly posts, a WordPress blog, and EDMs, with performance tracked through Hootsuite and Google Analytics, blending design, content creation, and digital marketing for impactful outreach.

Dreamy Monsterz

This project, created for the Design for Production unit, focused on designing packaging for a nightlight to comfort children aged 3 to 6 who fear darkness and imaginary

La Mama

This rebranding project for La Mama Theatre involved creating a fresh, modern identity for Melbourne's iconic arts venue, capturing its innovative spirit with a new logo, website, and cohesive visual elements. From posters to social media and signage, the unified design approach reestablished La Mama’s dynamic presence, allowing me to apply my graphic design, UX, and creative problem-solving skills to build a contemporary brand identity.

Altor

I collaborated with a team to design a mobile app for Altor, a security tech startup, creating a secure and user-friendly solution that enables tradies to monitor, track, and protect their tools, informed by extensive user research and optimised for theft prevention and usability in real-world conditions.

Acknowledgement of Country

The School of Design and Architecture respectfully acknowledges the Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners and knowledge-keepers of the lands, waters and sky that surround us, where we work, learn, create, communicate and make place. We recognise that sovereignty has never been ceded and this always was and will always be Wurundjeri Country. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who continue to make a better world through design.

We extend our acknowledgement to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff, students, alumni, real-life clients, and knowledge keepers, who have contributed to our own education diversity and growth. We will continue to ensure that staff and students respectfully honour ancestral connection to Country and Place in everything that they do.

We are dedicated to the notion of design to make a better world and we acknowledge that making tools, shaping place, sharing stories, making meaning, wayfinding and collaborating have long been and continue to be both central and integral to First Peoples' cultures. We recognize that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ cultural contributions have continued relevance to design practice and commit to: reconciling ancestries of design and contemporary practice as well as pursuing culturally and professionally appropriate ways to engage with a diverse population of colleagues, industries and clients. In a time of treaty-making and voice we understand that there are overlaps between caring for Country and the sustainable production of goods, services, experiences, products and buildings.

Guided by the principles of respect, reconciliation, and reciprocity we undertake to indigenising and decolonising design practice by dismantling colonial structures and challenging biases that have marginalised Indigenous voices and design.

As students of SoDA you will be given opportunities to both engage with and educate yourself in Indigenous creative practices and cultural protocols through a lens of inclusivity, diversity, respect, mutual understanding, inter-cultural dialogue in all aspects of design practice. Indigenous people have been telling stories, making tools, and connecting to Country through visual media, placemaking and place marking for more than 60,000 years and these practices are part of an ongoing, evolving and live tradition.