Material studies
Lava, brass, a green stone, terrazzo offcuts, a printed sphere full of holes. A finish is a sentence: brushed says process, polish says labour, patina says how long you’ve had it.
About
isomorphous — the same form, turning up in different things. A design house in Melbourne / Naarm, working across formats, modes and sectors: wearable ideas, playful instruments, curious systems. One practice. The pattern’s the constant; the material changes.
Made by Jeremy Yuille — thirty years across sound, interaction, service design and horology — from a studio in the Nicholas Building.
Jeremy coaches designers, strategists and small teams, as part of the same practice.
Objects
Watches, clocks, and a few stranger instruments, made slowly in Melbourne. Each one takes a rhythm you already have — the working day, the turning of a room, a signal from somewhere else — and widens it enough to see.
Instruments to widen time, made in Melbourne. Each one is a way of being in step with something — and each gets a window here as it comes.
A day, held on the wrist. Work, sleep, and the hours that are yours, in two bands of light. Wear it a week and you’ll know the hour by the weight of the day. Then the day widens.
In the makingTime you feel across a table, the way weather moves through a house. Slow enough to sit with. Stone, when the stone allows it.
In the makingSomething that arrived from elsewhere and learned the hours here. It keeps them a little differently. So will you.
In thoughtLava, brass, a green stone, terrazzo offcuts, a printed sphere full of holes. A finish is a sentence: brushed says process, polish says labour, patina says how long you’ve had it.
A small machine that makes a thing look at you. A physical algorithm, worked at since 2022.
Fast, cheap, and made to be replaced. It’s how the hands think.
Experiences
Everything here happens in time, with someone or something on the other side. Thirty years of it, and the same question each time: what happens when you jam with a system? Sometimes the system is a sampler or a browser. These days it’s also a designer, or a small team, working something out.
algae rhythm 10 (1996): granulation as composition. arc-hive 1,2,3 (1999): the archive as a living thing. slow (2001): the fathom aesthetic — subtlety, gestalt, things arriving late.
A CD player on shuffle for a bandmate (1998). PlayStation controllers for instruments (2002). Breaking things as a way of composing, both times.
Browser-native work since 1998 — the web as a place to make in, and the research it grew into: synaesthesia in webspaces, sound as a system you’re inside of.
A map of the ideas, with physics. Every node’s got a URL; pull one and the rest come with it.
A maintenance protocol you run rather than read. Systems stay alive through what flows through them.
Talk to 2eremy. Same substrate, fewer dimensions. The machinery’s declared — that’s the deal.
Designers, strategists and small teams, a fortnight at a time, with help in between. Your actual work, looked at through systems, consulting, design, and making sense of research, and written down so it stays with you.
Seventeen years at RMIT working out how design gets taught, in studios, across a school, and in the Master of Design Futures. It’s where the coaching comes from.
Ideas
Writing here is sketching with words. Telling as a way of knowing, seeking as a way of saying — put it down and it starts to show you what it is. Two decades of doing that where people could see.
Nearly thirty essays on design, facilitation, organisations and attention. Some of them hold up. A couple I’d still argue with.
The model is the landlord. Five pieces on cognitive infrastructure, scarcity, and what it takes to leave.
Engage relentlessly. Fear less. Share promiscuously. Seven of them, and they still hold.
The oppositions a practice runs on, kept live. Pull one and see what it’s attached to.
A field report from building one. With one. Not Jeremy, but not not-Jeremy.
Collaboration in Sonic Design (Masters, 2006). The Forensic Wall (PhD, 2012). Design as performance.
The writing about the instruments is moving to isomorphoushorology.com, where it can take as long as it likes.
Start a conversation. Jeremy will read it when he's next online.
Jeremy will see this when he's next online