Emerging talent: Lawrence Blankenbyl

By Sarah Heeringa, November 30, 2006 @ 2 am

Hotshot TV ad creative Lawrence Blankenbyl didn’t even watch the box until he was 12. Now the Brits have flown the Sweet Shop creative director to their Design Awards.

Idealog November/December 2006, page 17. Photograph by Simon Young

It might just be a biographical quirk, but hotshot TV ad creative Lawrence Blankenbyl didn’t even watch the box until he was 12. Growing up in West Auckland’s bush-clad Huia, Blankenbyl devoured books instead of telly, particularly those of a mythological or history bent. As a teen, he was into Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn and the like, and says he spent a while “getting all bohemian and existential”. Sometime between then and now, contemplation of the gulags was replaced by fascination with great design, magazines, films and the web.

The upshot? Graduating in 2004 with an AUT Bachelor of Graphic Design, Blankenbyl was hired a week later by local production house The Sweet Shop, partly due to his short film, Mobius. Initially employed as a director’s assistant, he was soon promoted to creative director. Meanwhile the five-year-old company has generated millions in export earnings, annual growth of 40 percent and numerous awards including the 2006 Axis Production Company of the Year. It has opened offices in New York and London and last year was named one of the top 20 production houses in the world by industry magazine Boards.

In August, Blankenbyl was named the 2006 British Council/Panprint New Media Design Ambassador and in September left on an expenses-paid return trip to the UK, including attendance at London Design Week. While there, he intends making the most of pre-arranged introductions to key UK design elite.

Among those he’d like to emulate, Blankenbyl lists Michel Gondrey, director of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, in part he says, because of his endless creativity and quiet soul. Spoken like a true existentialist.