After seven months of work the 2008 Melbourne Fringe Festival opens today. Thank you to our designer Sarah Furzer from our studio for all of her work on this project. Sarah has managed the finer details of the Festival’s communication work from poster design, the website artwork, overseeing the programme layout, to working how to make a big ugly portable office look like a bus – on a tight budget. There are signs and glimpses of 2008 Fringe everywhere, thanks again to the Fringe crew for all their help and guidance in making such effective campaign happen.

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

The studio with designer David Pidgeon developed a student publication on behalf of the Australian Graphic Design Association that addresses how to get a job by design writer Adrian Shaughnessy. Along with a voyeuristic question and answer forum with over 45 studios from Berlin, Sydney, London, New York, Auckland to Melbourne – exploring colour, typeface, beverages, influences to simply documenting studio web addresses.

Read Me First is a 40 page publication was a mad rush of late nights, collation and instinct. Today on day two at the AGIdea conference AGDA Victoria sold 450 publication in ten minutes. We will stock up again for day three and see what happens.

The publication is AU$10 plus postage, email us for your copy — ideas (at) peoplethings (dot) com

Visit Adrian Shaughnessy, Design by Pidgeon, AGDA here

There is an expression that states – that beauty is in the detail –and after working a little on the Moonlight Cinemas small press campaign, I truly appreciate what it takes to make, even the smallest of things in graphic communication, right.

As an intern at Studio Pip and Co., I was working on newspaper small space ads – I mean the size of two postage stamp for weekly screening times for Moonlight Cinema. This involves changing different movies titles for the week, paying close attention to ratings, dates, spacing and type sizes, etc. During a Moonlight season a new ad appears each Thursday to Sunday in publications like The Age over several weeks, across five Australian cities. With over 300 hundred ads in production it is little wonder that an individual ad begins to blur into hundreds of other ads.

After the ads have been designed incorporating their appropriate content, they are checked by three people within the studio, and then sent to Moonlight Cinema for approval. Upon approval each ad is saved individually, then uploaded to a special media placement website – another confusing task; there are so many similar looking files and if you weren’t careful you could easily upload the wrong file or ad.

One of the many things the internship has taught me is how much work goes into producing small design projects such as a 2×4 inch mono ad. It was rewarding to finally see the ads printed in the paper. I promised myself to pay more attention to everything I see in future. That said paying attention to the detail in pre-determined moderation is probably a better idea.

Elise Lampe
Studio intern – December 2007 to January 2008
3rd year graphic design student – Monash University

After our efforts for the 2006/2007 Moonlight Cinema Campaign, we were briefed to theme this year’s campaign and roll out print, advertising, venue signing and digital application across Australia. In contrast to last year’s image we developed a stark romantic image of the enchanted garden. The illustration was executed by our designer and image maker Sarah Furzer. Watch this space for updates.

Visit Moonlight Cinema here