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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