Robert Pataki Collection

Collection of archival material relating to the working life of industrial designer/product designer Robert Pataki (1948-). It includes documents, such as company records, slides, transparencies, photographs, illustrations, brochures, and booklets; artefacts including a small number of product samples. The collection is an extensive record of industrial and product design for industrial and consumer markets in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Singapore. Brands include major Australian and International companies such as Black & Decker, Ericssons, Kambrook, Philips, Sunbeam, and Vulcan.

Hungarian-born Robert Pataki and his family arrived in Australia in 1957. After graduating in 1972 from RMIT with a Diploma of Art (Industrial Design), he worked for a variety of corporations including John Holland (Construction), Crown Beco Lighting and Phillips Industries, before establishing Robert Pataki & Associates in 1978, a product design practices offering a complete design service, from research and development through to marketing.  Pataki is perhaps best known for his work with Phillip Slattery on the design of the 1984 Safe n’ Sound baby capsule for manufacturers Rainsfords (now Britax Rainsfords). It won an Australian Design Award and Design Council Selection in 1985 and the Prince Philip Prize for Australian Design in 1986.  Over the decades Pataki's firms PA Design (1982-1987), Neo Technics (1987-1996), Neo Products (1989-1996) and Neo Design Synergy (1996-1998) have designed appliances, professional and technical equipment, home wares, packaging and graphic design for major industrial companies including Motorola, Phillips, Black and Decker, Vulcan, Varian, Honeywell, GE, Kambrook, and Fischer & Paykel. Pataki was inducted into the Design Institute of Australia Hall of Fame in 2007.
The collection comprises 55 boxes, including 2 drawers of original drawings. It is largely organized according to material type, and in some cases types of project work for example, boxes 1 to 10 hold documents relating to businesses, incl. brochures for various firms and company records; boxes 14 to 17 photographs of products and product design; boxes 20 to 29 hold slides of renderings and products, listed alphabetically; boxes 30-31 hold transparencies; boxes 32 to 34 telecommunications products; Boxes 35 to 42 digital prints of concepts, renderings and photographs, Box 43 student work from RMIT, Box 54 and 55 hold original art work for various products for inc. Black & Decker. An inventory is available.