Formswell: The Canberra design duo in fine form

They're objects that we use every day and yet we never think twice about the person who designed them. And for the handful of times that we do, we often don't think further than the brand name.

It may be a Breville toaster, but in reality, it was someone's job to sit there and design every button, every curve and every switch. It's not about the technology or electronics, but rather the tangible vessels that house those inner workings.

And it doesn't stop there.

Kitchen utensils, bike racks, picnic shelters, water bottles - there's a whole world of design that doesn't often spend time in the spotlight. But when done well, industrial design can make the world of difference.

The design has perhaps improved functionality or helped to shape the image of a city. Or it could simply be the thing that makes something so aesthetically pleasing that you want to go out of your way to use it.

And that's something that Daniel Armstrong and Rene Linssen know all too well.

"Just how much goes into each product is crazy. Every little button. Every little click. Every little feeling. Every little bit of material. Everything you see, you've got to think of it all," Armstrong says.

"That phone didn't just pop out of a phone machine. It came from someone. Every little detail. And not just a phone but like a peg, or something you use in your kitchen."

You may not have heard of Armstrong and Linssen's Canberra company, Formswell, but you will certainly know their work.

The company came about after Armstrong returned to Canberra after living and working in Sydney and wanted to continue his career in industrial design. With no industrial design companies in Canberra, the designer started seeking out his own opportunities, as well as teaching at University of Canberra. It was there that he met then-student Linssen.

"He started winning all these awards and I thought I better employee this guy," Armstrong says.

It was then that Formwell was born and in the five years since, it has gone on to create designs that are now dotted all around the capital. So much so that you could almost use them to navigate Canberra.

If you head to West Basin, you'll see their picnic shelters and sculptural barriers. At the intersection of Cooyong and Lonsdale streets in Braddon is the same-sex pedestrian light.

Out at Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, they designed a sign featuring "One small step. One giant leap" as well as a star lounge - a seat where people can lie down and look at the stars.

And then there are the bike racks, which always seem to appear whenever you need them, their unique shape alluding to the outline of Parliament House.

It seems that everywhere you look, there's something Formswell is responsible for. And the average person wouldn't have a clue that was the case.

But that is part of Formswell's mission. Since forming five years ago, they've been consciously helping to create the face of Canberra.

"We decided to make sure that our biggest base is in Canberra, rather than look for all of our work in Sydney, Melbourne and overseas," Armstrong says.

"We wanted to change it ourselves, rather than questioning what other people were doing. And maybe make it more obvious that there's design here and give that option to have custom design to businesses and people.

"With Canberra design and drawing on Canberra for inspiration, I think Canberra has this feel going on. It's pretty high-end, compared to like Newcastle, for example. There's all this brass and solid block design - like brutalist design. That's kind of Canberra-ish so we tend to work around that and I like that sort of design."

The big design project Formswell is working on at the moment, however, is the Canberra light rail.

The company came on board with the project at the end of stage one, and are seeing stage two come to life, creating fly-throughs for the project as well as an interactive screen of the Civic-to-Woden route.

"It's like a computer game like Grand Theft Auto say, for the people in-house, as well as all the architects and the people designing it," Armstrong says.

"You can then go and walk around before jumping onto a light rail and fly all the way up to Woden or into town and see what's it's going to look like riding the thing before it happens.

"And you can take your own videos, you can do your own 3D rendering - really good quality ones. In the back end, they can send to us, 'Hey guys, can you take out these trees and put these ones in' all in 3D and we can do it overnight and it's done.

"When it's all done you can put that screen into the mall, and people can go and play with it and send feedback and muck around with it. So you can use it internally and also externally."

When the duo lays it out for you - or you learn some of the product names, such as Parliament House Bike Rack - you can see the projects which took inspiration from its location. The West Basin shelters, for example, are shaped like curled-up gum leaves, while the sculptural barriers get their shape from the Brindabellas.

Elsewhere, the design is determined by trends of material or colours. Either way, it's led by the client's brief.

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"There was a time when COR-TEN - that rusted metal - was big and everyone wanted COR-TEN, so all we were getting asked to do was 'Can you make sure it's COR-TEN with a pattern cut out of it?" Armstrong says.

"In those instances, you try and push the brief a bit."

And why wouldn't you take their advice?

Part of Armstrong and Linssen's job is to know not only what is trending, but what will be trending. Most of us, on the other hand, wouldn't even know where to start.

"That's the main thing I hear. People just ask 'Where do you start?" Linssen says.

"But it just feels natural, the whole design process. I guess we're used to it, but it blows my mind that people can't do that.

"I think a lot of people have ideas but they don't know what the next step is. We actually have the tools and ways of taking an idea and visualising it. And we have an inventory in our head of stuff because we're in that world so much."

With paid services such as WGSN - which posts photos of different designs from places such as Germany on a daily basis - designers from across the world can keep tabs on what's happening, and pick and choose elements that can be adapted to fit their own projects.

"When you're designing, for example, a bottle, you're never reinventing it," Armstrong says.

"Hyundai and Ford - they're not going to reinvent a car next year. It's going to have four wheels, and it's going to have air-conditioning and all the stuff that the rest of them do.

"But they'll do it anyway. They'll definitely design a new car next year because it's all about progression and making money, and what's new. So it's more about keeping our finger on the pulse around the world of what's coming up."

The same could be said for Formswell's projects. They didn't invent the food processor, but they still designed one for Breville. They didn't conceive of barbecue tools, but they did design some for Cuisinart's American market. And they didn't come up with cookware, but they still helped Australian celebrity chef Curtis Stone design his line.

Oprah favourite Curtis Stone is probably one of the biggest names the Canberra duo works with, topping a list that already includes the likes of sports brands Asics and Puma.

"We usually get pulled into a project as a consultant, from someone who's more in the project management space, to begin with," Armstrong says.

"Then over time, through emails and conversations, the client can figure out: 'They're the designers, not this guy'. Then we start going a bit more direct and if it's a good thing and they're happy with us, we end up just working with them directly sometimes. That's usually how it happens. We're not out there, knowing Curtis Stone going 'Hey, you want to do some design?'

"We speak with their people usually, but at some point, we will talk to them. Curtis Stone is going to sit down with us pretty soon and go through some new products."

An industrial designer is one of those career paths that teaches you more than you ever thought possible.

Armstrong and Linssen probably know more about barbecue tools, for example, than most barbecue enthusiasts. Just recently, they've started working on a resuscitator, and found themselves becoming experts very quickly.

"One day we'll be designing fishing lures, and then [the next] designing a waffle slab concrete installation thing. It's stuff you'd never probably know about otherwise," Linssen says.

Armstrong says: "And you don't know what you're doing and then you just start. But we never just stick to that industry, we draw on other industries. We could use something out of a car, for example, for the resuscitator".

Considering how many things Formswell has designed, and how many more things still need to be designed, it's surprising how relatively small the industry is.

Formswell is the only industrial design company in Canberra, and even in larger Australian cities such as Sydney and Melbourne, there are only a couple more. But Linssen says we're still batting above the average.

"Aussie designers, I find, are quite innovative or progressive. Especially in the furniture design world," he says.

"I went to Milan Design Week a few years ago, and I found a lot of the stuff just looks the same, because when you're surrounded by that style maybe it stops you from thinking any other way. But I feel like Australians have quite a progressive modern aesthetic because we're not surrounded by that. It doesn't hold us back."

April sees Formswell mark its fifth birthday with an exhibition at Adytum in Braddon. There they will not only use the space to display some of their designs but also sketches and 3D models to show the design process.