The studio has been working on 2010 forty-eight for AGDA, scheduled for the 2010’s State of Design, we excited to bring together nine artists, designers and image makers (in alphabetical order) and let fate and their stories, work and ideas dictate the rest.

Laura Cornhill, Studio Binocular – designers/image makers
Di Elderton, Argonaut studio – designers/image makers
Dominic Forde, Famous Visual Services – designers/image makers
Raafat Ishak – artist
Darren Henderson, dirtygood – designers/image makers
Aaron Moodie – The People collective – designers/image makers
Pete Salmon, Salmon Design – designers/image makers
Tim Kentley, XYZ Studios – Picture Maker

Forty-eight (is at a cross road)
6.30 to 8.15pm
26 July 2010
RMIT
Swanston Street, Melbourne

There will be drinks afterwards

For ticket details contact
vic (at) agda (dot) com (dot) au

The theme loosely explores…

In 2010 we are asking speakers to respond to the idea of being at a crossroads, a significant moment, encounter or situation that brought about a change in direction or a clarification. Your crossroads could be a project, person or process that changed the way you work, the output you make. Throughout history many movements, outcomes and ideas have come about from a punctuated moment of inspiration or insight. Tell us about a moment that you know.

Book early as tickets are limited!

Grrr

Nice shirt design

The big boy, sorry Andy. xxx T.H.

As part of the recent ‘Extra/Ordinary’ conference, the 2010 national conference of the Australian Institute of Architects, in Sydney, a conference action project initiated by Naomi Stead, Sandra Kaji-O’Grady, and Kate Sweetapple, had photographer Nick Bassett documented a cross section of architects, and designers.

The project set out to collect an archive of documentary-style photographic images of participants at the conference. Drawing upon objectivist serial art practices established in the 1960s, the project proposes a visual sociology of architects, observing visual traits, patterns and distinctions, towards a visual sociology of architectural culture at this particular historic moment.

The question remains do these people look like designers? Be it architects, interiors, planner, graphics.

321 images / people were documented during the conference between 23 to 24 Apr 2010.

Visit the project here

For enquiries email n.stead [at] uq.edu.au.

Spanish designer and live wire Javier Mariscal is coming to Melbourne for the 2010 agIdeas line up. The studio has put together a simple print piece to celebrate Mariscal’s visit.

Mariscal sent us some photos and characters he has developed over the years and we mashed them together. Printed by Bambra Press on Optix Tula Pink with dashes of magenta and yellow process, this DL invite to A3 poster will be hitting the post on Monday…Thanks to Bambra, Australian Paper and Spicers/Paperpoint for your help

Some clips of Mariscal (scrub to 1.02)

In conference Roma

Mariscal folly

Come along and experience a little bit of Spain, Brazil and a dash of Les too:

Mariscal at agIdeas, includes Rico Lins (Brazil) and the Les Mason tribute

Hamer Hall, the Arts Centre
Wednesday 28 April 2009, Time : 7 pm to 8.30pm
$50 members / $35 student members
Or,

Join us for the inaugural ‘Long Lunch’ with special guest Mariscal and friends

The Courthouse Hotel
86 to 90 Errol Street (corner Errol & Queensbury Streets)
North Melbourne 3051
Friday 30 April 2010,  Time : lunch from 12 noon
$150 including two course lunch, wine and bonus ticket to the agIdeas talk

Bookings
vic@agda.com.au
Call 1300 043 310

Visit estudio mariscal here

Studio Pip and Co has commenced a “pop up” project for six months in the retail precinct at South Yarra’s new landmark, Seven Yarra – comprising 78 residences on its upper levels and the 72 apartments of the Punt Hill Apartment Hotel.

We are swapping the confines of our out-of-the-way studio space to a shopfront. The space is a working design project, starting with the store’s window lettering, the studio will bring to life the design process and the making of products. In 24 weeks a working studio, gallery, retail space, and a sponsor drop in zone promises to come and go.

During this time a new website will be launched where design meets culture, work for clients developed, design wares sold, along with a little rattle and hum.

Existing clients, past clients and new clients, along with curious people and window shoppers are most welcome. Let’s see what happens when you cross a boutique design studio with a retail experience with a dash of public interaction.

We have develop a range of designer rebels to help celebrate our leap into the unknown – Nine Design Lives, Bloody Mindedness, Scary Ideas, Alien Concept and Tough-as metal type, to assist with spreading the word. Let us know your favourite rebel to help us with developing a limited edition – South Yarra Sell Out poster and tea towel.

Facts:
We are moving in early April 2010

Shop 3/ 7 Yarra Place, South Yarra, Victoria 3121
Email – soldout (at) peoplethings.com
24 weeks commencing 25 March to September 2010
We will be retailing – greeting cards, publications, tea towels, badges

Thanks again to Seven Yarra for supporting this project.

A herculean effort over the last ten days has seen the amassing of ideas, reviews, notions in and around design, its folly and the 2009 State of Design Festival. In the form of a 20 page newsprint publication – Design Reporter by Ray Edgar, Stuart Geddes, Penny Modra, and Jeremy Wortsman was launched at Iron Designer on Friday evening, just in time for the closing of the 2009 State of Design Festival.

Andrew contributed a piece of the Elwood type tour conducted as part of AGDA’s Back to Basic series, and an illustrated satire of latest logo bashing by the media and the public of the City of Melbourne’s big M by Landor titled – OMG! Wtf?.

The publication is as fresh as they get. There was not time for pushing shapes on white rectangles for weeks, mincing over picture crops, or fussing with type treatments. Greta, the typeface that is, gets a real workout, and the front cover (that doubles as an index) ironically depicts the madness of the last few days of emails, articles, rewrites, pictures, edits and final drafts. Amazing effort guys.

Pick up you copy at The Narrows, Metropolis Books, Lamington Drive and Greville Books – it’s free.

– – –

The 2009 AGIdeas wrap up dinner had a twist. Drinks, food, a big room and then Ken Cato introduced comedian Raymond Crowe. Crowes’s show had a dose of physical comedy, mime and slight of eye. Then the lights dimmed and a audience member held a flat white orb with light projected on it. The simple act of hand shadowing was the last act which mesmorised an unsuspecting audience with the possibility of child like play.

The State Library of Victoria has developed a free exhibition The Independent Type: Books and Writing in Victoria which explores Victoria’s diversity of written culture, stories, and people which allowed the independent literature culture in Victoria to flourish.

The exhibition explores Victoria’s literally markers from traditional Indigenous storytelling, colonial classics to contemporary writing. Writing history is on show, along with a fine collection of rare books, documents, manuscripts, posters and printed matter from the collections of individuals and organisations across the Australia.

Highly recommended for people interested in ink on paper, and the development of Victoria’s literature culture.

State Library of Victoria
Swanston Street, Melbourne
24 April 2009 to 25 October 2009
Visit the exhibition here

After a delayed start, the Studio held it’s sixth open studio night as part of the the 2009 AGIdeas programme. Rather than bore attendees with our work, we thought it might be good to have a mix of outcomes, work, process, brain storming, making, and design and life at the end. The night’s theme was “give and take and give and take”

We put together an informal program that had four stations … real work, process, brain storming and making. The making station allowed guests to simply make their own card, in black and white media only. The brainstorming section was a conversation and feedback sectioning exploring an internet project we are developing and launching soon – everyone’s feedback and effort is most appreciated.

Thank you to our visitors – Marilyn, Kirsty, Morgan, Hayley, James, Tom, Anna, Tess, Gus, Lewis and Aeysha.

Thank you to our ring-ins Sandy Hill, Matthew Remphry, Paul Garbett, Simeon King, Tony King for facilitating the stations.

We finished up at 9.30ish.

As part of the 2009 AGIdeas programme, AGDA Victoria is bringing out from New York, type designer, Tobias Frere-Jones.

Frere-Jones grew up in a world of commercial art, his late father Robyn was advertising copy writer. Robyn was once described as a writer that could make sense of anything impossible to describe. His mother was in the creative business too, as a production manager. Frere-Jones grew up subsequently amid tightly set headlines; which he loathes, artwork and printed ephemera with a purpose.

Tobias Frere-Jones along with Jonathan Hoefler runs a small yet universally praised type house Hoefler Frere-Jones based in New York City. It is not every day that a genuine type designer, not a graphic designer that designs the odd typeface, presents their version of design to a willing Australian audience.

Type designers can be placed as one of the unassuming custodians of language itself. Type designers have a direct linage with creators written language since cuneiform letterforms developed in 34th century BC. Type designers work is a means of transporting written expression through history, and it also happens to be handsome to delicate individual creative expression.

What makes a type designer special, above and beyond your average graphic is that on the surface their work is a process blatantly familiar – as everyone through the process of hand writing designs and constructs letterforms in day-to-day communications. However behind this seemingly simple façade of developing letterforms is a rigorous, obsessive attention to detail, extraordinary foresight, and the ability to comprehend designs through the eyes and minds countless graphic designers, end users.

Type designers have to imagine their typefaces used by the worst of graphic designers through to the best. The better the type design it seems, the better it can make the most mundane and impractical design appeal to the innocent on lookers.

See Tobias’s exhibition here

TOBIAS FRERE-JONES (USA)
MAY 4 – JUNE 6
THE NARROWS

Tobias Frere-Jones
MAY 4 – JUNE 6 2009
The Narrows
Level 2
141 Flinders Lane
Melbourne VIC
AUSTRALIA 3000
+ 61 03 9654 1534

Open Wed to Fri 12 – 6 pm,
Sat 12 – 5

OPENS MONDAY APRIL 4, 6PM

Read about Tobias in The Age. Visit Hoefler Frere-Jones here

NEW POSTER, thanks to Andrew Pegler for scrunching up his face and stating that : the headline could be better…

Designers-sell-out-beer-o-clock hosted by Why Pay More at Studio Pip and Co.

As part of AGDA Victoria’s on going event programme, come and say hi and celebrate what is graphic design in a down period, in down town St Kilda. BYO smiles.

Catch the Sandringham train, plenty of parking, and trams.

6 to 8 pm
16 April 2009

Argy Bargy
263 Carlisle Street
Balaclava

No fancy frills, no interiors by Nic, or Chris, or Pia. Come before 7pm and take advantage of Argy Bargy’s Recession Session – Cheap Drinks, odd chairs, lots of action, dramas and special stuff. The biggest woe-is-me-moaner will be put on massive logo duty for the next twelve months.

Download our NEW A3 event poster here
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