The event imagery

Signing (temporary) – 1st attempt

Signing (temporary) - 2nd version

Pop up entry

WIndow display

Internal space

Black and white poster (1 of 12 outcomes)

The tee

Internal neon

A5 brochure/postcard

Brochure / event invite cover image

Jardan Furniture has commissioned the studio to develop a concept and image for the 2010 Saturday in Design (SiD) event in Melbourne, held this weekend. The SiD is a two day programme and to get more value for the spend time, energy and resources Jardan sort out a pop up solution that is open for several months rather than two days.

The Richmond pop up will be the back drop of a new range of furniture allowing the Jardan sales team and potential client view pieces in a convenient location.

Like many of the solutions we develop for clients, the forms and fixtures has a light touch, allowing the work to have the greatest impact whilst being reusable, recyclable and engaging.

The building is facing demolition in a few months and we initially developing a temporary signing scheme that was to be directly painted on the building. The painter was five letter forms into a fifteen letter form piece, until a local sticky beak called the landlord – exclaiming that “young people are painting on the building”. Richmond has a rich history of graffiti dating back to the 1970s (with some excellent samples of trade union based pieces, now sadly painted over) and many locals are suspicious of paint based works. We were then limited to produce real estate agent style hoarding panels, which we had made of ply and vinyl lettering and to paint the entry doors pink to identify the site.

Three Deep Design often accuses us of using too much pink. To those boys out there in big bad design ubërland we say – boo, hoo, hoo – it is a happy, cheerful colour and perfect for a world looking for glimmers of such things. If their Mums had a pink kitchen, like Andrew’s Mum did, then maybe they would be strangely driven to splash around a little pink too.

Thanks to the crew at Jardan for all your collaborative spirit.

As folded DL objects

Poster A

Poster B

These posters are the latest output for the 2010 National Architecture Conference held in Sydney in April 2010.

There are two kinds of posters that combine rabbits, divers, retro bikes, paper cups and oranges to make extra ordinary compositions with ordinary objects. The posters fold from A2 to DL allowing the Institute to make a big impression while keeping the mail out prices to the standard letter rate of 55 cents. We have specified cost effective two colour printing and printed the project on coloured stocks by Optix in Copa Green and Velo Pink. We are loving printing colour on coloured stock, very happy sexy.

The posters communicate the event while the back details the programme. They designed be an exciting piece of DL print that can be folded out and hung in the studio or any public place, so if you have one hung in your studio take a medium rez photo and send it to us – we’d love to see them in situ.

Thanks again to Melanie and Paddy at the Institute for your vision, proofing and guidance.

Visit the conference here

The studio is busy developing event materials responding to the theme extra / ordinary for the up and coming Australian Institute of Architecture conference held in Sydney, April 2010.

This tea towel is one of the take-a-way items for architects looking for an extra/ordinary kitchen accessories.

For details visit the conference’s website

The reality of spending time doing and working through a process, to then find this process is fast becoming superceded by a new process is a situation as old as time itself.

Established print designers moaning about developing work for the web is common, and all one can say, as politely as possible, is to get over the old days of print, embrace digital and invent new spaces for print.

As designers who love to work with ink on paper it is challenging to think that several weeks of effort could be spent on a product that is bits and bytes, yet this brief is appropriate for a time requiring work that has low environmental impact.

We approached the project in the normal way – research, concepts, image making, information planning and presentation, design development, sign offs and artwork. The only difference being is that the project was a digital document with a small print component – a series of four postcards.

This project required us to demystify and promote government grants developed for the creative sector. Government grants present businesses the opportunity to bring about a range of positive changes to work and practice, and we wanted to depict this idea with a range of evocative images. The images are a response to the old notion of people using some form of external device, or machine, to bring about a radical transformation. Within a tight budget we investigated the inventions and dreams of people looking to transform – time machines, jet packs, and person transporters and we took it upon ourselves to invent our own twist of the fabled dream machines – as a mash of people, wings, tin helmets, propellers, and curious body suits.

The design exercise aside, this PDF has been devised to help the creative sector to seek grants and execute the process in the best way possible. Details can be found at Design Victoria here. Thanks again to DV for this communication opportunity.

With Brian Eno in Australia for the past months, one has been digging back into the music archive to enjoy the sounds and sights of what seems to be a less precious time in creativity. In 1972 the world didn’t have a raft of Masters or PhD academic courses to explore and rationalise process and spurts of human productivity. People made ideas and with enough practice, spirit or naivety made these ideas real – or that is what I think.

Roxy Music’s debut album – Roxy music, is a mash of the two Brians, the noisy Brian and the hopeless romantic Brian fresh out of the box with some ideas on their minds. The third track on Roxy Music – If there where something, a Marantz PMS 7000 portable music player and a daily 5km walk are unashamedly the prime influences of this image and graphic presentation. The rest was just allowed to happen until it felt right, and the deadline made it necessary.

48 this year sold out again, unashamedly.

Happy birthday Alan.

External signing – overall presentation

External signing – entry detail

External signing – window detail

External signing – internal detail

The studio was commissioned to develop a range of outcomes from print to apparel, posters to badges for Jardan’s big day in Sydney.

The studio has either dabbled with retail, or worked with a range of retail customers of late…

The cut and thrust of developing retail products and offers is that one has to risk the time, resource and money in realising, developing, production, marketing and distributing the product. However, the risk can be reduced, the ultimate success of a product can be fast tracked by working with rigorous market research and developing a comprehensive product strategy and marketing. Yet the true test of any product, is putting the product in front of the customer to discover if they find the product desirable enough to purchase it.

The market offers one the truth of the retail process — an opportunity to witness products succeed whilst others go unnoticed. This assists one to develop patterns or formulas for product designers to work by. Studying people‘s purchasing habits reveals that many successful products are attractive, obvious ideas, and well worn clichés. With a world burgeoning with obvious, attractive and clichéd product choices, a new opportunity emerges for product development —  for offers that tap into shifts in desire, as people seek new offers that rekindle their desires. It is a balance of finding and timing new ideas that a product designer negotiates. Knowing when to let one cliché go and bring to the customer‘s attention a more obscure idea, or cliché to desire.

The biggest trap a product designer can fall into is solely believing that their taste, style or insights of product will guarantee success. The other trap is shaping ideas that are too abstract from the common ideas that all people associate with — to name a few — love, hate, family, friends, beauty, ugly, happy, sad, dogs, ducks, war and peace. Many new ideas are simply old ideas recast, rehashed, redreamed.

In a restless world in restless times, one of the biggest wishes we have for the world is peace. Peace in war time, peace with the environment, peace in our homes and work places, peace with our selves.

It took little convincing to present this idea as big and as beautifully as possible with Melbourne based South American inspired fashion retailer Origén. The holiday campaign for Origén is a bold yet simple campaign that only finds its way on select, prominent and existing applications. Rather than creating a raft new applications specifically for the season campaign — instore posters, ticketing, wraps, shopping bags, wobblers…  This approach aligns with the studio‘s sustainable design process — saying more and using less.

Our peace dove was created by Sarah Furzer in pen and ink and brought into the digital relm for execution on the store‘s external windows, and on Origén‘s 2007 greeting card.

The weekend just passed heralds the fourth year of the Design Market in Melbourne.

The market was an idea that the studio developed while working with the National Design School, Swinburne, to compliment marketing their post and undergraduate programmes in 2003.

At the time Swinburne‘s marketing team passed up the idea and Andrew then proposed this idea to the team that developed the inaugural State of Design Festival programme for the Victoria state government in 2004. Andrew then devised the market‘s name Ready Made Market which was then renamed the the Melbourne Design Market in 2006. The studio also designed subsequent brands and material for the 2004 State of Design Festival, the Ready Made Market and the the Melbourne Design Market.

Melbourne Design Market brand was one of the last projects developed for the National Design Centre. The type utilises the custom typeface designed specifically for the National Design Centre — irreverently called Fluffy in response to the custom font that Garry Emery developed for the City of Melbourne called buff. The Melbourne Design Market, like many business names is difficult to design in type — one long word, two short words, hence the breaking of Melb-ourne to create a balanced piece of type design. If you think the that the “i“ in design looks like a floating balloon or lolly pop – you would be right, as the market is more like a fair or carnival for design.

Since 2003 the design market concept has been running successfully for four yeas in Melbourne and adopted in Sydney and attracts tens of thousands of patrons. It is exciting to witness an idea action into a presentation of design and its makers, that connects design directly with the public.

This market is not unlike the seven markets that we have attended in the past. The mood of the shoppers may have been sobered by the global financial crisis, however hundreds of transactions took place over the course of the day from $2 to $40 to keep our spirits high.

The Pip and Co stall was generally packed, and even though the majority of browsers were just browsing, it was enlightening to watch people interact with the studio‘s work, witness the projects people look at, field a range of questions about the work itself, and take in how people interacted with the humour, detail and presentation. Christine from Studio Round who was sharing our stall with the famous Hold all bags also share her insights of visual merchandising.

Developing design solutions is generally a closed process. It not often one has direct access to the public, over referring to market testing and consumer research. One can feel that they are working in isolation and it difficult to make sense of the antidotes, hunches and research results in the absences of a real audience.

Thank you again to everyone that visited our stall and interacted with our work. Again we recommend to every designer to sell out, develop products, present products to the public and participate directly in the market economy.

The studio has prepared a publication that captures Joost‘s vision for sustainable living to accompany the Greehhouse at Federation Square.

With writing and editing by Annemarie Kiely and photography by Earl Carter; we were tasked to capture the Greenhouse before it‘s construction. Raw materials, the food, plants, the furniture and the contributors like Joost‘s recycler and compost maker were captured by Earl.

At the last stage of the publication we asked Joost to interact with the piece adding another layer of personal detail. The publication is 24 pages printed on 45gsm 77% recycled newsprint. There is six four page sections, the first four sections are pictorial and were developed to be used as posters, or wrapping leaving the remaining two text based sections intact for distribution.

The piece was printed by Newsprinters in under 48 hours from the delivery of final files.

The publication is available for the Greenhouse over summer 08/09, for details visit the Greenhouse here.

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