After graduating from Queensland College of Art in the mid 80’s, Clint kick started his career as one of Australia earliest typographic exponents of the Macintosh computer. Clint was involved in establishing one of the earliest design studios in Queensland to utilise this new technology.

Clint went on to work with international Designers Minale Tattersfield as their digital pioneer in Australia. Over a 20+ year commercial career in Design, Clint’s focus was on typography in all its forms. Commercial life was rewarding and Clint went on to manage his own type & design business for over 10 years.

These days Clint now finds himself back in his old neighbourhood of the Valley at the helm of Design College Australia. With 100+ young creatives under his wing, Clint enjoys the responsibility of directing some of Australia’s finest emerging creative talent.

After 20+ rewarding years in the commercial design scene, Clint decided it was time to pay it forward. In an all or nothing decision, Clint purchased Queensland’s most respected private design Institutions, Design College Australia. For the past 10 years as Head of School Clint has directed DCA in continuing to be Queensland’s leading educational facility of Graphic Design and Photography.

At Design College Australia Clint works tirelessly as Head of School to share his passion, knowledge and skill with the emerging generation of designers, photographers and letterpress enthusiasts.

Clint can be found lecturing in any the school’s disciplines, from teaching a photographic lighting class, to explaining the challenges of sustainable packaging to graphic design students. However, you will most often find him in the type studio sharing Australia’s largest working collection of wood and lead type in his typography classes.

Design College Australia can proudly boast that the typographic classes offered at the college are regarded as the most hands-on typographic education in the country. These typographic studies take place in the infamous Bacon Factory. The type studio is located in a back lane of Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley in an unsigned building hiding an Aladdin’s cave of antique machinery.

The Bacon Factory hosts Australia’s largest working collection of woodtype and is accompanied by hundreds of type specimen books and printed typographic samples of the past. It is in the Bacon Factory that Design College students typography lessons embrace terminologies such leading, points and picas, upper case with real, tangible meaning as students feel the weight of wood and metal in their hands.

No PowerPoint lecture could have the same lasting impression. As students ink up their formes, typographic history comes alive through the use of this traditional medium.

Like all true teachers, Clint continues to expand his own knowledge by collaborating with living legends of the old trade. Clint has an ongoing apprenticeship of sorts with master printer Bob Read and typographic compositor Ken Newlove.

Together they restore old presses, cast type on a collection of linotypes and Ludlow casters, all in which they offer workshops to the broader community and at the close of the day they can be found sharing a yarn over a cold beer or two...

With a prized collection of woodtype, over 300 cabinets of lead type, 20 plus historic printing presses, 10 linotypes, 4 working Ludlow casters, and the Bacon Factory has become a mecca for traditional typographic studies in Australia. This working collection of the typographic past is eclectically housed in an old abattoir in Brisbane, Australia.

Always a lover of typography, it was while visiting the Hamilton Wood Type Museum in the United States that Clint’s passion was taken to new heights with exposure to the world’s largest collection of woodtype and the traditional nature of letterpress.

Clint was inspired to arm himself with as much knowledge as he could about Australasian typographic and print history. He began filling a spare classroom of his college with presses, font collections, type drawers, rare books and type specimens.

This letterpress classroom soon became overflowing with treasures an additional building was sourced and The Bacon Factory was born.

The collection serves as a classroom, public workshop facility and private museum. Students affectionately referred to the type studio and museum as The Bacon Factory, this 1926 brick structure was once a small goods factory and the working title stuck. The Bacon Factory has gained a worldwide following amongst typographic and letterpress enthusiasts and is sometimes referred to as the ugly step sister to the likes of Hatch Showprint in Nashville Tennessee.

To Clint, this is his temple. Seven days a week Clint can be found at this alter of type, conducting typographic classes with his Visual Communication students and workshops with professional designers and the curious public. Sundays though are the day for personal worship. This is when Clint takes advantage of the solitude of the studio to work on personal projects alone or with like-minded artisans. Clint collaborates with retired masters of the craft and fresh new converts on experimental and commissioned work.

Clint regularly travels the world searching for more typographic inspiration to broaden his knowledge. These pilgrimages have sent him to the USA, central America, Asia, Europe and New Zealand. Once home, he frequently receives parcels of type, books and specimens from far and wide.

Some call Clint a dreamer, and this is probably true, but historian and crusader are also apt descriptions.

While his design colleagues try to keep up with the latest software release, Clint can be found directing a forklift operator to save the likes of a Model 1 Linotype weighing over a tonne. Type rescue missions have been underway in a number of city’s around Australia where Clint has saved regional print shops, small newspapers and type casting trade shops full of casters, galley cabinets, all destined for a date with the scrap man.

Perhaps all the lead has got to him. In the digital age where infinite fonts can be freely downloaded online, Clint is introducing his students to typography via the limitations of letterpress typesetting.

His students have taken advantage of his passion and enjoy unrestricted access to the working equipment of his collection to toil on college assignments and their own projects. The rules are simple:

1. There must be respect given to the ladies and gentleman of our typographic past
2. Your mother doesn’t work here so clean up after yourself

It is evident that the desire to achieve the real and authentic has spread to this young generation of graphic designers in spite of the ease and convenience of digital imitation.

This dreamer is not stopping with one school and one museum. Motions are in place to establish a number of working typographic studios across Australia and New Zealand. The future of traditional typographic craft and letterpress in this corner of the world appears to be in safe hands.