With the recent onslaught of natural disasters in Australia, it has come to one’s attention how important communication is – in terms of mobilizing communities facing natural disaster. As one reads the following, one can’t help to be filled with fear, even at 3,000 kms away. The questions that fills one mind is – where does one start to pitch the urgency of message?, how do one propose levels of urgency in language?, are these messages pre-written and drawn upon as the situation permits or are they developed at the time? Incredible skill sets and perceptions are at play.

Our thoughts and prayers are with far North Queenslanders tonight at around EST 10pm.

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An exert from BOM document follows…

IDQP0005
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Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology
Queensland
Tropical Cyclone Warning Centre
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At 7:00 am EST Severe Tropical Cyclone Yasi, Category 5 was estimated to be 555 kilometres east of Cairns and 560 kilometres northeast of Townsville moving west southwest at 30 kilometres per hour.

SEVERE TC YASI IS A LARGE AND VERY POWERFUL TROPICAL CYCLONE AND POSES AN EXTREMELY SERIOUS THREAT TO LIFE AND PROPERTY WITHIN THE WARNING AREA, ESPECIALLY BETWEEN CAIRNS AND TOWNSVILLE.

THIS IMPACT IS LIKELY TO BE MORE LIFE THREATENING THAN ANY EXPERIENCED DURING RECENT GENERATIONS.

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AGIdeas is one of the world’s largest and longest running design events that takes course over a week. The event runs with a series workshops, forums, and social activities with a three day conference at its centre piece in Melbourne. Studio Access is an event where delegates select and call upon in the evening a range of Melbourne communication design and creative studios for insights of their runnings. As a participating studio we are given the opportunity to produce an invitation.

We like to use these briefs as a means of exploring the notions of the design object in question. In the case of invitation there is legacy of elegantly designed and worded slips of paper with matching envelopes.

Writing is often at the centre of our work and this year wanted to bring to the light the staple of writing – paper back novels. Reading a book is a journey of sorts that can run in parrallel with our lives in the form of tickets, cards, notes and stickers. We also like to challenge the nature of an object. In this instance could an invitation be an object, rather than a slip of paper.

We raided an opportunity shop and bought a bag of books. Then we made and collected cards, stamped, stuck and wrapped. We designed a range of Ex Libris labels for the books stating the simple facts – quoting a pass word protected web address and password for attendees to follow. Seventeen individual invitations were hand assembled for distribution.

AgIdeas 2009 international design week runs from 4 to 7 May 2009.

Tickets for AGIdeas are available for here