Bounce Books is born when brothers-in-law Neil Montagnana-Wallace and Leonard Montagnana team up to start a publishing company to tell the stories of companies celebrating milestones.

We collaborate with Thiess to produce the first of four books for them. This one was for their 75^th anniversary. Based on more than 40 interviews with everyone from the truck drivers to the chair of the board, this book is a 360-degree view of what it is to be a ‘blue blood’.

Text here to introduce audio, if Audio from Neil will be placed here. this text could be about the first books apart from Thiess like Marconni, the dance book? what about talking about who did what on that time?

Neil teams up with Socceroo legend Mark Schwarzer to write and release the first of five books in the Vootball Kids series – Megs and the Vootball Kids. Since Val is still a primary school teacher at this point, her class becomes the focus group for the manuscript, which she reads aloud to them a chapter at a time as it is being written. One of her kids, Cam, is the inspiration for the cover artwork, and all of the kids are invited to the book launch.

Soccer becomes recurrent theme, in 2010 Neil and photographer Enzo embark on the project of a lifetime – a behind-the-scenes book of Australia’s Socceroos South African World Cup campaign. Each Socceroo receives four copies of this limited-edition book that captures the highs, the lows and the laughs in the locker-room. We put the band back together to capture the team’s Asian Cup journey in Qatar two years later, and then again when the team heads to Brazil in 2014.

Val Montagnana-Wallace joins the tiny team and gets to work trying to win new work. Her first project is a book for Turnleys, a 100-year-old family business making and selling hairdressing supplies. With a mad-professor laboratory dating from the 1940s in their basement, they are living proof that there’s no such thing as a boring story.

Neil and Val decide to put all their eggs in one basket. They buy Leonard out of his share of the business and move into new rented premises on High St in Preston.

Bounce takes on the mother of all editing jobs to transform an 80,000-word, 20-year-old manuscript, into a coffee-table book with half as many words to celebrate 125 years of MLC Financial.

Melbourne icon Luna Park celebrates its centenary, and Bounce Books has the privilege of telling its story. To ensure that there are enough photographs of happy people having fun at Luna Park in the book, family and friends of Bounce Books take over the park on a quiet afternoon and Bounce photographer Jo Sheather is kept busy trying to get everyone on camera before the kids come down from their fairy-floss highs.

Later that year, author Neil and Bounce project manager Miranda Lee attend the media launch of Melbourne Zoo’s sesquicentenary book and find out first-hand that wombats prefer to eat books rather than read them.

A book for Note Printing Australia means we get to learn all about how our money is made. Author Neil and photographer Jo are subject to all sorts of security checks on their way in and out, and we discover that $5 notes that don’t make the cut, get recycled into plastic buckets!

Rairu Rebolledo joins the team as our inhouse designer. Her first project is a book for Toorak College, who will mark their 140^th anniversary in 2014.  When the college turns 150 ten years later, she will also design that one.

Bounce crosses another Australian icon off its list when we are approached by Coles to produce a coffee-table history for their centenary. The book is gifted to every single person who works at Coles in 2014, plus many others who have helped shape the supermarket’s story. Fun fact: the Coles family hold the record for most number of siblings knighted (five, and one dame). The book is launched at the National Portrait Gallery, supervised by the portraits of all those Coles brothers

Is 2015 when an enormous box of biscuits lands on Bounce’s doorstep when we begin working on a book for Arnott’s 150^th and project manager Anna-Lena Janzen graciously shares it. This project involves photographing each of Arnott’s many factories, and asking everyone we meet: what’s your favourite Arnott’s biscuit? Many discussions ensue about the correct way to do a Tim Tam Slam.

The same year Neil begins unpacking the story of Akubra. When the Keir family discovers that they just love telling their story, and that a book alone isn’t going to cut it, they ask Bounce to design an installation that will be showcased at the book launch, to be held at the Sydney Easter Show in 2016.

For many years, the Otto Wurth smallgoods factory in Preston has lain derelict. When the area is redeveloped and the building goes up for sale, Neil and Val snap up their very own piece of history.

The Akubra project was the first seed for a Bounce’s transition. After many, many conversations about small topics like, who are we? Why are we here? And what do we want to be when we grow up? Bounce Books launches Hyphen. Stories, well told. Now Installations and films becomes part of our portfolio of projects, the team come together to this transition and takes part in designing the Hyphen logo and giving an identity to this new brand.

A core Hyphen value is ‘say yes and figure it out’. This results in our first ever film being a feature-length documentary for CSL’s centenary. The film comes off the back of a book, and we partner with film-maker Simon Dikkenberg to pull it off.

Hyphen begins the first of several projects for International Art Services. The result is a vibrant and beautiful book filled with stories from the art world. A year later, its author Jess Atkinson, who is now living in LA, follows up with a book for IAS’s sister company in Portland, USA – Artech Fine Art Services.

After almost fifteen years at the helm, Neil steps back from a leadership role at Hyphen, and Val steps up. Neil continues to research and write books and films

In a year of chaos, in the most locked-down city in the world, Hyphen manages to keep its head above water and its projects moving forward. Films and installations are impossible, but luckily, books can be written, edited and designed from home. That year, against all the odds, we publish books for Bakers Delight and Southern Steel by Nic Brasch, Elders 181 by MaryRose Cuskelly and Catherine Butterfield, and several others. And we hardly cry at all.

A film capturing a centenary of making hay whether the sun is shining or not for South Australian exporters JT Johnson and Sons is quickly followed by a book, A Century in the Making

Hyphen collaborates with the team at Heidelberg Materials Australia to produce a rebranding film and a little something for their website. Project manager Claudia Piggott hits the road with film maker Mark Harrison to learn all about concrete and aggregates and the people behind them to make it happen.

Having grown first Bounce Books and then Hyphen for nearly two decades, Neil exits the day-to-day of Hyphen to pursue other adventures but remains on the board.

Hyphen is a team of writers, designers, editors, film-makers, photographers, project managers and creators. We continue to thrive on telling stories because we know better than anyone that there’s no such thing as a boring story.