DA Friends Connect is Design Assembly’s online lunchtime event series. Running regularly throughout the year, each one-hour session brings designers together from across Aotearoa New Zealand to share ideas, exchange experiences, and learn from one another.

Do you ever wonder how the design community across the ditch is doing? Join us for this Trans Tasman edition of JDT with Carol Mackay and Greg Branson from the Design Business Council, Liz Archer an Australian Designer, Louise Kellerman, DA Founder, and Mark Easterbrook, Creative Director and Copywriter, as they discuss commonalities and differences between our two design communities.

We invite you to send in your questions ahead of time as we take a look across the water and compare notes.

About our guests:

Liz Archer-Fisher Head of Operations, The Edison Agency

Originally trained as communication designer, Liz has a career spanning 16 years across radio, digital media, and agency life.

A typical generalist, she’s developed expertise across design, sales, client management, marketing and operations, a combination that gives her a distinctive perspective on how creative businesses function.

As Head of Operations at Melbourne's The Edison Agency, Liz focuses on the systems, processes, and culture that allow great creative work to be delivered on time and on brief.

Her design roots shape how she thinks about problems and how she works alongside creative teams, understanding the language of design without competing with it.

Carol Mackay Co-founder Design Business Council

After 30+ years running a design studio, Carol accumulated a pretty special network of fellow designers. One thing most have in common: a dislike for the ‘business’ side of design. Most are impatient with any task competing for time spent doing what they love – designing.

Not her. She loves that intersection between design and business. Her career included clients like Ombudsman schemes, the Emergency Services sector and the Courts. Her special power has always been an ability to use design to translate the difficult to understand or the unpalatable message.

She now uses the same skills with creative business owners. Carol helps translate the indigestible into bite-sized chunks of information. She shares insights, introduces tools and embeds processes to help others build confidence business decision-making skills. More confidence makes it easier to grasp opportunities. More confidence makes it easier to recognise a good client from the bad.

Outside DBC Carol has mentored with Womentor, AGDA and most recently with The Aunties. She is a proud board member of Never Not Creative.

Greg Branson, Co-founder Design Business Council

Greg’s passion is the research and development of methods that improve design management and the role of design in business.

His longevity is in his ability to change and adapt. Greg’s career as a traditionally-trained photographer; became an academic, teaching photography to design students. He co-founded and ran Mackay Branson design (for over 25 years). When he recognised an area that he loved – design management – was not an area traditionally covered in design education he co-founded the Design Business Council. Since then he has worked alongside hundreds of Australian creatives helping them manage their business better.

Greg has sat on the AGDA Victoria and National councils, on a number of University and TAFE Advisory Boards and helped rewrite the VCE Visual Communication curriculum.

Outside of DBC, he is a passionate analogue photographer who spends an inordinate amount of time in his darkroom. You can follow his work on instagram @gregurbanfilm

Each event features a 30-minute roundtable with two designers and one industry expert, followed by an interactive discussion with members in a live meeting format. The sessions are also recorded and shared exclusively with our DA Friends membership.

Not a member yet? Come and join the Design Club — join Design Assembly as a member today.

This is a free-to-attend for DA members online event

Contact the host of Design Assembly Join the Dots| Trans Tasman Edition | June 2026 | Online event

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