BRYON FITZPATRICK
1931 - 2015

Professor Bryon Fitzpatrick was a celebrated, internationally renowned educator and designer with a career that includes significant experience in the UK, Europe, the United States, Asia and Australia.

He was Professor Emeritus at College for Creative Studies (CCS) after serving for six years as Chairman of Transportation Design. Under his stewardship the department gained recognition as the world’s leading automotive design program.

Prior to CCS, Bryon had served for nine years as a member of the industrial design faculty at Art Center College of Design, first at the school’s Switzerland campus then in Pasadena, California.

In his earlier career, Bryon enjoyed a long tenure at the Rhode Island School of Design and has held other full-time faculty positions at three Australian schools: Queensland University of Technology, Adelaide School of Design and Canberra College of Advanced Education.

His professional automotive design experience included working for the Ford Motor Company in England and Germany, designing vehicles for the company’s European product lines. He later moved to the international automotive design firm, Ogle Design in the UK, where he designed the famous Triumph Trident and BSA Rocket III motorcycles. He also designed for the British Motor Corporation’s Australian division.

Bryon also enjoyed a celebrated product design career that began with his work at the prestigious Danish design firm Bernadotte and Bjorn designing products for clients such as Bang & Olufsen, as well as glassware, photographic equipment, and furniture — projects that earned him a number of European Gold Medals for Design Excellence. In Australia he founded Design Ink, a design consultancy with clients in the automobile industry, industrial equipment and electronics. Many of his is Design Ink projects gained Australian Design Award recognition.

Bryon was dubbed “the Drawing Machine” for his astonishing drawing and rendering skills. He conducted automotive design workshops for professional designers in the US, Europe, India, Australia and China. At PATAC/GM he was retained as their in-house design tutor conducting group workshops and one-on-one tutorials for their automotive design team under the auspices of a CCS/GM collaboration. 

In 2013 Bryon was inducted into the Design Institute of Australia's Hall of Fame, along with his friend and colleague the late Imre Molnar.

Bryon passed away on September 27, 2015 at his home on Bribie Island, Australia.