David Gravina
David Gravina is the company principal and founder of Digital Eskimo.
Born in Melbourne and educated in Systems Design at Monash University, David moved to Sydney in the early 90s. He worked in design, programming and producing roles for creative and communications agencies until the end of the decade when he decided to travel through Europe. Settling in London during the dot com boom he continued to freelance at leading brand and digital agencies.
Returning to Australia in 2000, David combined his creative skills with his passion for social and environmental issues. While working at a dot com start-up he moonlighted with a team of media mischief makers to create ‘Unolympics’ – a satirical take on the Sydney Olympics. Another collaboration involved projecting an image of a first fleet ship with the words ‘Boat People’ onto the Opera House, garnering mainstream media attention. Inspired by the success of these early projects David formed Digital Eskimo, finally aligning his values and his work in a substantial way.
With a core competency in communication design, Digital Eskimo’s work includes a broad mix of innovation, strategy and research projects for a range of NGO, arts and business clients. Career highlights include the award winning ‘Your Rights at Work’ and ‘Message In a Bottle’ campaigns for the ACTU and Amnesty International respectively. In 2007 the grassroots ‘Raise The Bar’ campaign, co-founded by David and designed at Digital Eskimo, was pivotal in successfully replacing draconian liquor licensing laws in NSW. In 2008, Sydney Magazine (to his endless amusement) named him as one of Sydney’s Top 100 most influential people.
He is a founding member of green networking event greenUps, a director of the live local Foundation and regularly speaks about Design and its potential to create a better world.