Brand elements

In expensive personal computers, user friendly software and the world of graphic design is your oyster. So in the spirit of everyone is a designer, builder, artist and even photographer we developed this stationery suite for Sydney based photographer Karl Schwerdtfeger.

We followed the typical design process, establishing brief, working through responses, working out the look and feel, establishing the elements and then the realisation is left up to Karl. Welcome to the world of “D.I.Y. brands”.

More brands elements

Business cards

Stationery suite made on 13.09.2009

Cartell Music is an independent music label bringing music, other than Western sounds, to willing ears. In the process of putting words together and developing a graphic outcome, we seek to find a visual gag, or cliché within in the words, so to minimize the need for additional visual elements. An exclamation mark said — “hello you weirdo design nerds”, from this assemblage of letter forms and we were off to design utopia. We continued to customise the type to end up with a robust composition of lettering, which went onto develop a range of rendered variations.

From wiki — The exclamation mark was introduced into English printing in the 1400s, and was known as the “note of admiration” until the mid 1600s. This seemed the perfect symbol for a client with an ongoing admiration for exotic sounds.

In the spirit of one of our design heros – Herb Lubalin, Mr Lubalin logo’s for – families, Marriage and Mother&Child – in particular are constant references and inspirations. In a period of graphic expression where many logomarks are complicated (with sometimes complex) symbols, typemarks and brand guidelines, we are determined to develop work that has a fine balance of customised forms, decorative elements and steely functionalism.

Entertainment production organizations are the brands behind the more prominant entertainment products and entities. This brief required us to develop a modest, yet robust brand that is distinctive and functional at the edges of the main attraction.

Further to developing the brand mark we then tackled Cartell’s website.

Visit Cartell Music here

The studio was approached to develop a new brand for coffee vendors Kerekere, pronounced kerry, kerry. Kerekere is a Fijian custom of giving without expectation of repayment. Kerekere is located at Melbourne University and customers have the option to choose where the profit goes to the: owner, an environmental cause, cultural causes, or social causes.

The brand is simple, soulful solution that references the distribution process. A playing card is given to customers when ordering their coffee, the customer then chooses the cause by putting it in owner, environmental, cultural or social slot. The hearts suit seemed the most appropriate to graphically represent Kerekere.

In the coming months the brand will be manifested using stencils, chalking, rubber stamps and online.

Visit Kerekere here

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. As young adults playgrounds are a part of the passing scenery. As young parents one learns to appreciate playgrounds that are interactive and engaging, because children adore and live for a thoughtful playground.

The simple act of playing is critical part of human development, as many life skills are developed in play — strength, balance, agility, problem solving, socialisation. Play is with us all for all of our lives, even if we don‘t realise it.

In the studio, play is a critical aspect of our design process and to quote our ‘All play‘ (a section from our html website) — the play feeds the work and the work feeds the play.

The play feeds the work

The heading says it all. We believe there is only one path to generating ideas and creative thinking. That is to draw upon dreams, influences and experiences that surrounds us and re-purpose these encounters into ones own version of dreams, information and experiences.

In day to day experience one can‘t help being influenced by what one encounters, whether the process is serendipitous or highly engineered. The simplest method of idea generation is finding something good and copying it. The extremes of the methods start with ambient influence, direct influence, imitation, mimicry to blatant plagiarism. It seems almost impossible to be original, unless one is God.

Michael Worthington from CAL Arts captured this process beautifully late one night playing pool with me in Melbourne — you are as original as your sources are obscure.

As with everyone, our obscurities are wide and varied. These experiences come to life in writing and images we make, that are developed mostly for the enjoyment of the process itself. It is no coincidence that these experiments and follies end up in the work we do for clients, or maybe for ourselves.

When Australiasian Playgrounds, now trading as A-Play, approached the studio to help re position their brand, we were only too willing to explore, debate, resolve and play. As part of the new direction A-Play is looking to enhance its product lines combining Australian manufacture, innovative design and sustainable technology. The former brand was a literal and awkward expression, and we felt that A-Play needed to be brand that is confident yet something you could bump into and not get hurt. The brand‘s simple confident forms reference ‘shape play‘ one of the first forms of play introduced to people. The abstract nature of the brand allowed the image to reference play, yet not be specific to an age — as A-Play produces equipment for junior play to adult fitness. The outcome also required a robust form allowing it to be cost effectively stamped, punched, embossed, screened and laser cut on a range material and surfaces.

As with any rebranding project, the brandmark was a good place to start and the refreshed communication approach will be extended to a range of applications. Thanks again to A-Play for making play part of our process.

The Project Agency is an emerging Melbourne based marketing, brand and events consultancy that works in the areas of fashion, lifestyle, beauty, food and… They approached the studio to develop a brand and communication collateral to get heads talking and tongues wagging.

The Project Agency is a tricky selection of words to put together, so we tasked ourselves to come up with a tasty slab of type. Andrew worships at the alter of Herb Lubalin, and a recent shipment of U&lc magazines from the late 1980s, made Herb‘s work top of mind — no one does a tasty slab of type like Herb.

Avante Garde typeface (ligatures) by Herb Lubalin

Typemark by Herb Lubalin

After several presentations, the Herb inspired idea came up trumps. With the basis of the type mark approved then we spent time rubbing, back and scrubbing in the studio‘s homage to Herb. The type mark has an accompanying custom design seal based upon electrical engineering marks crossed with a Albrecht Dürer monograph. The stationery suite is a look book of sorts drawing upon The Project Agency‘s recent inspirations. It is intended to change the image work regularly.

Thanks again Esther we had enjoyed bringing this new brand together. Thanks to Gunn & Taylor for more fine printing.

Visit The Project Agency here

Visit Albrecht Dürer here

Visit Herb Lubalin here

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 Moons are rock upstarts with a name on loan from the storming wild man, Keith Moon, taking musical nods from The Beatles, The Who, and Supergrass. This new Melbourne act approached the studio to develop a unique wordmark which has been adapted for CD packaging, merchandise and promotional print work.

The custom lettering was designed to be copied and doodled by fans. The lettering was devised with strong accentuated vertical shapes and lines to make the word mark memorable for would-be-graphic-designers to scribe on bags, exercise books and flat prominent surface.

Tommy Elliott, the band‘s songwriter and bassist provided a very simple brief — I love the graphic on Keith Moon‘s Lilly drum kit, can it look like this?

Visit The Moons here

Martel is the upholster‘s upholster. Their busy, modest factory floor is testament to the quality work carried out there — from a much loved chesterman lounge, Featherstone chairs, a classic B&B sofa and upholstered wall panels for the much revered back bar at Melbourne‘s Cookie bar and restaurant can be found waiting for work.

Martel‘s identity was determined from it‘s most basic form and then realised in complex variations. At its most stripped back form — we determined that Martel was an upper and lowercase identity. We then developed a customised and streamlined san serif typeface.

The project‘s work continued with an exploration of a range of techiques and hand finishes used in upholsters‘ stitching, pipings and detailing. The new font was then expressed in a wide range of these upholstery techiques. These new lettering expressions were used as single brands or wordmark expressions. We also developed illustrated graphic type based compositions that can be found on Martel‘s postcards, business cards, the web, signing and even door handles.

Visit Martel here

The lettering is an adaption of a classic cut of typeface Avante Garde. Along with some new and existing font ligatures, the linking ‘OO‘s references the Olympic Rings (as the RMYS was a 1956 Olympic Sailing venue) and the look is about Long Island Ice Teas and Gatsby by the bay. Thank you again to Food & Desire for the motivation and guidance.

The overall image pays tribute to Andrew‘s twenty years in graphic design with references to American design of 1980‘s prominent during his student days at Randwick Design School. This look is crossed a playful graphic interpretation of symbol made easy with contemporary software tools.

There are two kinds of symbol a portrait and landscape greeting card graphic incorporating the company‘s initials. The symbol is designed to be used with the type, or on its own. The stationery is backed up with a range of graphic images based upon the type and shapes found in the type mark. The colour palette is a favourite of the client, designed to be black, white and red all over.