The studio was awarded several design excellence awards at the 2008 Australian Graphic Design Association National Awards held in Adelaide over the weekend. These awards include, click through to see project details:

2008 Distinction awards

• Stephen Daring Brown packaging paper promotion for client Spicers Paper
• Stephen Recipe publication new paper range promotion for client Spicers Paper
• Stephen Exploration publication new paper range promotion for client Robert Horne in the United Kingdom
• Read Me First publication for client the Australia Graphic Design Association

2008 Finalist award

• The first edition of The Design Papers editorial design for the National Design Centre

Melbourne’s XYZ Studio was also awarded a Finalist award for the animation developed for the 2007 Melbourne Fringe Festival that developed from the creative theme devised by the studio.

Many thanks again to clients AGDA, Spicers Paper, Robert Horne UK, National Design Centre and Melbourne Fringe for developing strong creative briefs and fostering engaging outcomes.

Visit AGDA here

The studio has been madly working with Fringe developing the 2008 festival campaign. There is mostly a new team running the festival, in a new work space – an exciting process of review, scoping all the options and then implementation is in the air.

The campaign this year has been developed around the idea of it being a project, or an event in its own right and we have extensively collaborated with David, Emily, Eloise and Beau to work out what’s right, right’s what and wrong rights. It is not your typical designer and client relationship – rather than setting briefs and doing work on computers, it is working out the opportunities and executing how to exploit them. A very nice way to do work.

There is much to show and that will come later. In the meantime enjoy the excellent motion piece developed by Studio XYZ in response to the theme we put in place for Fringe 2007.

The studio is launching a print piece at this year’s festival, watch this space, as they say, for details.

Pearl Restaurant and Bar engaged the studio to develop its website. The brief was open at the start, it could be a sexy flash site, it could be html, it could be both, or something else. The more that the client and studio investigated the many restaurant sites on line, it became clear that the site for Pearl had to allow the restaurant to build on it’s community. Therefore there was a need to provide interesting destination rich with quality content often, for customers and followers of Pearl to loose themselves in.

We propositioned the client with the process of generating content with customised web log based software. The ease of staff delivering content to the internet, won over their desire for seductive moving graphics and digital effects. Visit pearlrestaurant here and move about its splashy tabloid like interface and visit often – the guys at Pearl are passionate about generating their own brand of stories, ideas and insights often. This web solution allows all manner of content to flow.

Thank you to Andrew and Geoff at Pearl and Lee at Irrepressible Wonton again– wonderful process.

As part of the Alliance Graphique Internationale Congress in Amsterdam participants where asked to respond to Amsterdam’s marketing theme “I am Amsterdam”. Thanks again to Lee at Little Irrespressible Wonton for putting the clip together. Visit the congress’s website

The Melbourne Fringe Festival in the lead up to, and during the event run a community based television ad campaign. Melbourne’s XYZ studio was appointed to develop a 15 second spot.

The TVC project was a chance to see how the “everyone is a designer“ theme translated to a different media form by another creative organisation. We supplied artwork components, had a couple of productive telephone briefings and then let time and XYZ do their thing.

XYZ embraced the project and resolved a work intensive, stop motion, animation fest. In typical fashion XYZ generated the most interesting and engaging expression of the whole campaign. We urge you to keep an eye out for the TVC on Network Ten in the coming weeks, or visit XYZ’s website for a preview (we haven’t worked out how to embed moving image on this blog yet). Go XYZ, you good things.

See the TVC here

Visit XYZ Studio’s here