Leigh Harris

Kanolu and Gungarri

Leigh is a Cairns based Aboriginal business owner with traditional connections to the Kanolu people of Central Queensland and Gungarri people of South East Queensland who is also proud of his Italian and Welsh heritage

As a well know diverse Aboriginal creative and digital designer with over 25 years in the industry he has worked on some of the countries major design and creative projects. His knowledge spans design, code and film and has been selected as a finalist in photographic awards for his photograph and has his images used by CNN, BBC and National Geographic as descriptor for First Nations identity in Australia

As a designer, active in the design and digital creatives space for over 25 years he owns and manages ingeous studios a multidisciplinary design studio based in Cairns. Trained as a Public Relation officer with Aboriginal Hostels Limited in Canberra in the late 1980’s he moved to Cairns in 1993 to work with Cape York Land Council as as Communications Officer working throughout Cape York and the Torres Straits for 11 years prior to the establishment of ingeous studios.

Leigh developed Australia’s first Indigenous developed app in 2009 and more recently he was the back-end and front-end developer that assisted Arrernte cultural advisors create the Indigemoji app that has over 80,000 downloads and was an Honoree for a 2020 Webby Award and was a 2020 Prix Ars Electronica Honorary.

As a well established business ingeous studios, a creative design and digital agency and he has worked to ensure the integrity of what he does as an Indigenous business owner and creative and in 2019 in partnership with NorthSite Contemporary Arts established IndigeDesignLabs to share his wealth of knowledge and inspire young people to get into the digital design and creative design industries.

Working remotely for clients across Australia and internationally, Leigh has successfully maintained ingeous studios as a leading creative digital production agency that is a hybrid agency that works across creative productions and digital technologies.