Slapped up, crinkled, raw edges, fat dots, big contrast, clashing screens, visual tricks, awkward type, generous slabs of yellow and black, thick screen printed ink, big big big, here one day, gone the next. Nothing beats a street poster and this year’s Melbourne Fringe festival street posters is the pay back for working late and tweeking elements, and shuffling stuff on white shapes. Thank you Rock Posters. Yum.

These guys say… a festival is looming.

The studio in recent months has produced countless design outcomes for Melbourne Fringe 2008 in print, digital, advertisng to apparel. Design for events require a solutions that can be tailored for a range of shapes and sizes. We endeavour to build into our outcomes a suite of flexible visual assets that allows us to make the best of every application.

Black and orange are great colour combination to work with, however the shift in the orange’s chroma or brightness varies greatly from spot colour printing and 4 colour process printing – the newsprint outcome which was used to produce the programme is the poorest rendition of the festival’s orange. These posters show Fringe’s orange at it’s most vibrant and best, coming to a café near you soon.

Chamber Music Australia (CMA) facilitates this region’s largest and most revered chamber music events. The studio was tasked to develop a suite of communications items — from the brand to programme, apparel to advertising, signing to certificates and the web.

We wanted to put in place an image that positioned the event on the world stage — employing a confident and engaging graphic that suggests music, excellence and a sense of excitement.

The event programme was particularly rewarding project. With the guidance of CMA we assessed how the audience uses the programme and restructured the information to make the reading and review process intuitive, visually exciting, efficient with increased legibility.

The brand mark had several renderings a striking true mono solution, two to four colour outcomes and outcomes that are illustrated interpretations of the event graphic.

The event was declared the most successful competition on all fronts in CMA’s twenty year history by the CMA’s President Bill Forrest. With this result under our belts, we felt that it was timely to resign our eight year design and sponsorship partnership with CMA. We are focusing our energies on cultural partners in greater need of raising their brand and communications profiles in the community.

The studio ensured that materials had a extended usage life, building into the design outcomes multiple purposes and functions. We used sustainable printing, recycled papers and local manufacturing to produce desirable and highly reusable objects.

Folder, event programme brochure, invitation

Café postcard, event brochure and invitation

Programme brochure that folds out to A2 wall poster

Programme front cover and a selection of spreads printed using two colours

A one colour presentation folder that doubles as a wall poster

Competition t-shirts and carry bag

Design Victoria commissioned the studio to develop this invite/poster for their up and coming Law and Design lecture with Trevor Choy in Ballarat. The poster is being printed modern version of rustic – the new FSC approved Stephen Scrambled White by Spicers Paper. Thank you to Design Victoria for this opportunity and Spicers Paper.

Tuesday 13 May 2008
9.30 am - 12.30 pm
Registration: 9.15 am

The Alexandria on Lydiard
30 Lydiard Street North, Ballarat, Victoria

Free with RSVP

Visit Design Victoria here for details

Is the poster redundant? Is the poster a space that makes scense of the sponsors logos placement and hierarchy? One looks to poster design in Europe and dreams of medium that is larger than life. A communication space where the image is the message and the audience is visually enhanced – A mythical cast of thousands hungry for well craft messages and images that tap on the door of the art world and call out – is if there is a room in the inn for the night?

On the other hand the majority of Australian poster design is a canvas for a big picture; sometimes art directed, a headline, text unsuitable for reading in the poster format and let’s not forget a stable logos.

A good campaign is usually capped off with a poster. We design our posters to communicate and to be stolen. A good poster is a stolen poster. A poster that compells someone to break the law to decorate their homes and work spaces.

We love a good poster, we love making innovative and mimicked campaigns too.