ABOUT US

Let’s take this back to the start

Our dynamic design-duo, James Kennedy and Yolandi Schreuder, met in 2008 on their first day of their Industrial Design course at university and immediately became friends – working together on projects soon after. Through their love of design, determination and strong work ethic, they assisted each other through their challenging course, to successfully graduate in 2011.

They founded Our Awesome Work in their last year of university, 2011, coincidently on International Industrial Design Day. In November 2015, …XYZ design and Our Awesome Work amalgamated to combine the two entities skills and experience.

Dunstin Maree is a qualified Physiotherapist. He is the Ergonomics and User Experience director. He came on board when he met James and Yolandi at an event. They started talking, and immediately knew they could work together and build great products that can really benefit users.

Taariq Latiff studied with James and Yolandi, and they have been working together ever since. He joined the team to handle all the users interface, content and graphic design for the agency. Our Awesome Work continues to live on as the concept development arm of the business where …XYZ will continue to bring ideas to life and into the market.

Thriving on the ethos of Form Follows Function and finding pleasure in the intricacies of the behind-the-scenes design process, James and Yolandi’s need to embody functional and aesthetically pleasing design into their daily lives led to the simple birth of any idea, soon developing into a concept, then a prototype and ending up as a lamp, table or a bike rack!

It was Tony Gaskins who said, “If you don’t build your dreams, someone will hire you to help build theirs.” – James and Yolandi wanted to be the architects of their own dreams. They decided to go out on their own and start a business, which comes with its own set of pros and cons; as a student in Warren G. Tracy’s class said, “Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.”

It has been a challenging four years so far, and with the help of all of their friends and family through the good days and bad, they’ve made it this far with smiles on their faces and the same determination they started with. This is their first product that they’re taking to the international market and they have worked incredibly hard to satisfy their unwavering dedication and commitment to designing for the user and bringing the user something that people really need – not what they only simply want.

James and Yolandi spend every waking hour designing, working and building their dream. They are the epitome of perfectionists and will not give the consumer a product that they’re not whole heartedly behind and truly confident in. This is why a seemingly simple idea took them two years to develop. And the fruits of this labour is truly remarkable.