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The genesis of an Object for Thought — CJ Anderson and Jay Jermyn’s design visions

The genesis of an Object for Thought — CJ Anderson and Jay Jermyn’s design visions

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The world of product and lighting design is often one of quiet refinement, but for Objects for Thought (OFT), it’s an arena of bold ideas and deliberate action where artistry and innovation meet industrial design. Australian Design Review (ADR) recently sat down with Jay Jermyn and CJ Anderson, the creative minds behind OFT, in their North Melbourne studio-cum-workshop to discover what motivates and inspires these former Gold Coast locals, mates and business partners, and answer the question — what is an object for thought? 

Jay Jermyn, left, and CJ Anderson.

North Melbourne is not exactly known for its reputation as a hotbed of creative industry. Yet, on a quiet semi-industrial street lined with factories, warehouses and the odd worker’s cottage, is where OFT have chosen to locate their Melbourne studio and workshop. 

The workshop is relatively small, considering the output and Jermyn and Anderson’s huge vision for OFT. They share the space with fellow Melbourne artist and designer Jordan Flemming, giving it the quality of an artist’s studio that meets your granddad’s shed –  if your granddad was a former electrician, music producer and sculptor who worked in finance. 

OFT’s Sequence lamp. Photography: Jonathan Kaye.

Jermyn, originally from Coolangatta and now based in Melbourne, and Anderson, born, raised and still living in the Gold Coast with his young family, met while studying industrial design at Griffith University. It was an instant understanding that at some stage, they would start a business together. 

A qualified electrician, sculptor and music producer, Jermyn’s boundless energy and Coolangatta surf-coast mindset are perfectly balanced by Anderson’s more calculated, strategic approach. Indeed, this yin/yang balance, combined with the skills they both acquired before completing their design degrees and joining forces – Anderson in banking and finance, and Jermyn as an electrician – that has contributed to OFT’s seemingly overnight success. 

Canteen Pizza, designed by Studio Gram. Photography: Dion Robeson.
Lighting the way from the Gold Coast to Melbourne and Milan

Launched in 2023, OFT has quickly risen to become one of Australia’s up-and-coming design studios. From exhibiting at Melbourne Design Fair in 2023 to being invited to show at Salone Del Mobile in Milan in April 2024, it seems that for this duo, anything is possible. 

“It was actually crazy how we ended up taking OFT to Milan,” Anderson tells ADR. “A few months before I said to Jay, ‘We’re going to go to Milan’. And he was like, ‘No, we can’t. It’s not the right time’. We didn’t give it much more thought. And then we did a product shoot with our friend who’s a photographer and writer for The Local Project. We said, ‘Hey, could you get us in there?’ And they happened to do a seven-page spread on us. Six or so months later, we got an email from an Italian design studio. They’d seen our work in The Local Project and invited us to show at Salone.” 

Rider Quad.

If ever there was a case for manifestation and putting ideas out into the universe, this surely is it. Of course, it takes a lot more than a seven-page spread in a magazine and sheer good luck to succeed in the highly competitive design industry, particularly when it comes to lighting design.

This begs the question: of the myriad products the pair could have chosen to build their business around, aside from the obvious connection with Jermyn’s electrical trade skills, why lighting? “Well, if you’re designing sofas, the amount of space you have to have is astronomical!” laughs Jermyn, when asked how they manage to produce their products from a space about the same size as an Inner North studio apartment. 

Rider at The Ocean Club.

Lighting is arguably one of the most sculptural expressions of product design – not only through its physical form, but also the way light casts into a room to enhance and sculpt individual or collective design elements. When the discussion turns to the artistic nature of lighting design, Jermyn, who is naturally animated no matter what he’s talking about, becomes even more positively charged. 

“Lighting is the most dynamic [product to design],” he says. “You can f***  around with it and explore the shapes and the forms, the organicness and the materiality in so many different ways. With a table or a chair, you can do that to an extent, but you can’t fix it to a wall. You can’t have it standing on the floor. You can’t suspend it from the ceiling. There’s only one way or one place for a chair or table to exist.” 

Prose, flipped.
Design is serious business

While OFT may be a young business, both Anderson and Jermyn bring years of practical and technical experience in design and business, which they apply to their own designs as well as their collaborations with residential and commercial clients.

Anderson’s father has a successful business building custom motorbikes. “I grew up in a workshop, and if you couldn’t make it in our workshop, you could never make it,” he says. Like many young men eager to chart their own course, Anderson’s first degree was in finance. “I liked the idea of being a professional,” he adds. Immediately after graduating, Anderson got a job in a bank. 

Rider tripple.

Obviously, the banking world was not Anderson’s true calling. He returned to university in the mid-2010s to do his industrial design degree, which has proved a very useful skill set. “The finance side of things has filtered into many aspects of my design career in terms of how to deal with people, consumer psychology [and] all of those sorts of things. It’s helped everything I’ve done in my life afterwards,” says Anderson, who is also responsible for all of OFT’s sales and strategic business development. 

Jermyn’s past life as an electrician has obvious relevance for a lighting design brand. The fact that he was on the tools, on site, wiring and installing his fair share of fittings produced by those who are now competitors, gives OFT an edge. 

“From a design perspective, knowing how a trade is going to install something is really beneficial,” Jermyn says. “We come from the perspective of figuring out how we can make the installation processes easy and reduce the barriers that trades have when a fitting is really complicated to install. How can we make ours simple and standardised but still create a really beautiful product?”

Rider double at Bandit Pizza.

The answer, beyond considering hidden details, such as ensuring that the mounting hole screws for their outdoor lights are exactly the same size as the junction box that fixes to concrete, lies in Jermyn and Anderson’s thoughtful, considered curiosity and artistic sensibilities distilled through their personal practical experience. It lies in creating Objects For Thought. 

Objects that go beyond purpose 

What exactly is an object for thought, as opposed to an object for function with a defined use and purpose? Somewhat of an oxymoron, the studio’s name has an esoteric edge to it. However, as Anderson recalls, the name, while perfectly obvious and fitting now, came to them in a completely unrelated way. “We were pushing to come up with a business name for months, and then we just got to a point where we were like, look, we’ve still got a long time to go until we need one, so let’s just park that one for the time being,” Anderson recalls. 

Rider quad.

Reflecting on how the OFT name eventually materialised, Jermyn muses: “One day we were talking about an exhibition CJ was doing that included a dented bench, titled Objectified Memories. I remember him saying that it was almost like it was an object for thinking or for thought. That was it. Objects, in an art context, can inspire people to stop and think.” 

And this is exactly what each piece in an OFT collection does. Through their intensely considered proportions – the first collection took more than two years to design and perfect – and careful material selection that seeks to create a sense of tension by juxtaposing the organic sensuality of natural timber or cast brass with the industrial precision of engineered steel and sandblasted glass, an OFT light holds your attention, even when the switch has been flicked to the off position. 

Prose in Walnut.

“An object for thought is, I think, an object that evokes curiosity in people,” says Jermyn, after a pregnant pause. “I hope too, that when the lights are off, people do also look at the lights and have that same curiosity, thinking ‘I want to touch it, I want to feel it. How did they do that?’ This is the way we unpack anything, [any design object we admire], that’s ever been made. We look at it and wonder aloud, ‘how did that happen?’”

The future is a brilliant sunset

This spirit of inquiry, problem-solving and commitment to excellence has served the pair exceptionally well so far. Not only were they invited to show in Milan, securing a number of contracts and a European distributor as a result, but they were also finalists in the 2024 Interior Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) Object Furniture and Lighting, Professional category. And they have no intention of slowing down.

“It’s a big wide world,” Anderson says. “We want our brand to have a global presence. We will manufacture here [in Australia] and we will work here. But I think with the way that the world works, it’s essential to have a global strategy. We’ve focused on setting up our distribution partners in everywhere but Australia first. So Europe’s up and running now. We’re speaking with a studio in Japan at the moment as well.”

Rider single pendant.

This is not to say that Anderson and Jermyn aren’t true-blue Aussies and passionate advocates for the local design industry. In fact, it’s their authentic natures, fine art, design and music pedigrees that have enabled them to build great relationships with manufacturers, suppliers and designers so effortlessly – all vital ingredients for success.  

From the outside, OFT’s ascent may appear rapid and touched by the hand of fate. For Anderson and Jermyn, it has been a lifetime in the making that began on the Gold Coast. “We each grew up immersed in nature, spending afternoons down by the beach,” Anderson says. “It’s that sublime, reverential light that we’re inspired by and trying to capture and recreate. Light sets a mood. And for us, it’s about memory.” 

Rider Double at Pearl and Ash.

This is, perhaps, what a true ‘object for thought’ is. An object that evokes curiosity, as Jermyn describes it, as well as one that triggers deep memories to rise to the surface. Whether we realise it or not, design objects, as much as sunsets, leave an indelible mark. From the colour and texture of the sofa in our family homes, the wallpaper of a favourite grandparent’s hallway and the patterns cast on our childhood bedroom walls by a colourful rice paper lampshade. If you take a moment to give thought to these objects, you realise that design shapes us. 

Anderson and Jermyn’s designs, born of sunsets, motorbikes, music and art and an intuitive sense of what lies ahead are already shaping those of us who encounter their work.  Whether through their own lighting collections or the pieces they design in collaboration with other designers, guiding them to shape their own ‘objects of thought’ into tangible forms for thought, OFT is poised to shape the memories and thoughts of future generations of designers. 

Images supplied.

Discover more iconic design objects, the Eames’ Moulded Plywood (LCW) chair and the Eames Hang-It-All

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