There is commercial naming projects and there are the naming projects that have soul –  the names of our community precincts – St John’s Wood, Seven Dials, Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, Five Ways, Crouch End, Land’s End.

The Unnamed Precinct project is an initiative of residents, businesses and institutions in the area of Sydney bound by the part of Oxford Street from Taylor Square to Greens Road, including the neighbouring cross streets and surrounds. The five-way intersection of Oxford Street, South Dowling Street, Victoria Street and Barcom Avenue marks the centre of the precinct. The project team work and live in a place that they feel needs to have a name, they are seeking ideas and feedback from the community to clarify this idea.

Having lived and work there, we put aside some time and submitted the following naming options:

In light of the rich local history of artists and artisans one may suggest some of the area’s most prolific artists under the theme – celebrating local creative people

Brett Whiteley AO (7 April 1939 – 15 June 1992) was an Australian artist. One of the best-known Australian painters of the 20th century, he is collected in most Australian galleries. He had many shows in his career, and travelled extensively around the world.

Whiteley suggestions:

• Whiteley
• Whiteley’s Corner
• Brett’s Way
• Endlessism

John Coburn (1925 - 7 November 2006) was an Australian painter. He is also known for his tapestries.
He won the Blake Prize for Religious Art twice.
All the major galleries in Australia have displayed his works. Two of his tapestries hang in the Sydney Opera House and seven hang in the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington D.C. His works are also displayed in the Vatican Museum, Rome.

John Coburn also was a lecturer at the nearby, National Art School, Sydney which was at Coburn’s time in the Old Darlinghurst Gaol which was converted to the East Sydney Technical College.

Coburn suggestions:

• Coburn
• John’s Corner
• John’s Way

Thanks to Simeon King from Anagram for sending this project our way

Have a go all you naming people.

Visit The Unnamed Precinct here

When one isn’t trying to think of the perfect after party play list that pleases absolutely every red blooded person on the planet, one is seeking refuge in type.

The Exeter Hotel is one of the many landmark public houses in CBD Adelaide – One can have a parmagana with an $849 bottle shiraz. The public bar stands as it has since the last renovation for a hundred years – a long room, modest timber finishes, with a long bar and high ceilings – not a white on white fit out in sight. So to stands a history of much of the venacular type. While many cities mow down their obscure type history, in Adelaide it is kept in tact, at least till it’s relevance is discussed at a community level – let’s not forget this is the Australian state that was the first to grant indigenous and woman the right to vote. In the long bar one designer’s interpretation of a local beer brand is allowed to stand next to it’s former incarnation – please enjoy David Lancashire’s interpretation of the Southwark brand in the 1980s completed entirely as a piece of hand lettering. Then there is the Exeter Window lettering, the cross bar of the ‘E’s, is strangely enforced in the ‘H’. One wonders (as only a type nerd can) if the hand letterer made this touch of a whim; on the spot of hand lettering the piece, or was it a design drafted in the weeks, or days before?

Then there is that curious font used for the the recent AGDA National Design Awards developed by Voice studio in Adelaide and it’s inspiration… The Adelaide Produce Exchange facade lettering on Grenfell Street, Adelaide. The word Exchange is a glorious sample of eccentric type design at it’s most individual.

The Australian pioneer of moulded plastic furniture Harry Sebel, passed on 18 September 2008 at 92.

In the early seventies the fabled wooded school chair was passed over for Sebel’s famed – Slim-n-Comfy Sidechair. Back at the time, 70s school children liken this new chair to something that ascended from space – with it’s organic shell and insect like legs. Since it’s inception this unassuming chair has been sold in the tens of millions and can be found on all corners of the earth.

Complicated solutions to any problem are fairly easy to come by, but it takes genius plus a fair amount of perspiration to arrive at a simple solution. Harry Sebel (24-10-1915 to 18-9-2008)

Amongst the many projects and products, Sebel also conceived and developed the Sebel Town House hotel complex in Elizabeth Bay, Sydney in 1963. Sebel created this lair to court and lure international rockstars, pop queens, the rich, the famous, hangers-on and want-a-bes in town. A place to loose one’s self, part with a little money, and potentially be immortalised in black & white on the bar’s dimly lit walls. Like many institutions in Sydney the famed Sebel of Elizabeth Bay has become appartments.

Visit Sebel Furniture here

This brand for the National Parks & Wildlife Service NSW, Australia, has been like this for over thirty years at least, may it be around in its current state for at least another thirty, sixty years. The quirky chevron, the line work, authentic graphic boomerang, the punctuation, solid orange and black, and Lyre Bird in full display – it makes for a graphic design experience that is unique, graphic, distinctive, a commercial brand and no sign of the tools or technology that rendered it. Redesign, refresh, evolve, revolve at your own risk – screen print it big, on a charcoal, orange, or biege t-shirt anyday.

Craig Dunn sent us some additional nostalgia… clearing one archive and happily filling up another.

‘Limited budget, miracle worker’ poster was printed by Rawson Graphics for a paper called Threads by Dalton Paper. This single poster was part of series developed by Daltons, that explored a range of controversual topics. The miracle worker concept was released post the September 11 attack, and was devised by Sydney based creative outfit – By Radio, that has since closed shop.

Have paper promotions since reached such risky heights? Where are the logos? Loving the scale. What has the whole baby line got to do with paper?