It’s Dame Elisabeth Murdoch’s 100th birthday on 8 February 2009 and we dedicate this post to a special project the studio has produced to coincide with Dame Elisabeth’s Birthday. Read more

The simple act of playing is often taken for granted by people.

As children we adored our closest playground. As teenagers the playground is the place to chug down a cheap bottle of wine before a party. Read more

During the summer holiday some people in Melbourne hang around town and some, the lucky ones, find somewhere quiet in the country or by the sea. This is Pearl Café in holiday mode with a summer menu and an image by Andrew in holiday mode as well.

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.