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 Studio has been working with Food & Desire to develop a new venue brand for the Harbour Room located at the Royal Melbourne Yacht Squadron in St Kilda. Recently refurbished under the direction of designer Chris Connell, this fine catering venue required a confident and adaptable brand first, print media and advertising collateral to follow.

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.

Australian Greeting Charity Cards (AGCC) provides greeting cards for the not for profit sector to on sell for fundraising purposes.

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.