Melbourne Fringe Festival

A cultural fringe festival is an exciting graphic design and communication brief. By the very nature of being the “fringe“ event on the cultural landscape, there is an expectation for exciting thinking and innovative outcomes.

We felt that festival identity could be found within the do-it-your-self theme that informs many aspects of modern life. As individuals we are driven to self style, shape and customise our possessions, living spaces, and experiences. The proliferation of DIY content, reality televisions and abundance of choice allows one to enjoy, express and prosper in terms of self expression and self realisation.

The notion of D.I.Y. in contemporary culture shaped a presentation that explored a theme developed by philosopher Carl Jung — that everyone is a designer.

We presented a mash of ideas that touched on avatars, adult cutie toys, MacPaint, DIY design kits, pixels, default design tools, designing like a non-designer, big dots, more toys, a comedy developed by British actor and comedian Steve Coogan, the colour cyan, a clunky futuristic event brand, a finely developed event typeface and the notion of beautiful ugly.

We wanted a festival image that a school kid, a wayward mum, or earnest businessman with a pair of scissors could produce. We wanted to develop a curious and cute (by true definition) image that offered the public an enguaging alternative to the raft of polite graphic solutions that seem to dominate cultural and public events — a campaign that would bring a smile to Melburnians and its cultural endeavours.

The studio produced a vast suite of promotional materials including a comprehensive website programme, posters, flyers, apparel, banners, signs, and digital graphics to be rolled out across Melbourne in September and October.

Happy Fringe Melbourne.

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Melbourne Fringe Festival 2008 HD from Peter Lundgren on Vimeo.

The Melbourne Fringe is one Australia’s most vibrant festival fostering emerging cultural talent. After the campaign the studio produced in 2007, the studio was invited back again in 2008 to participate in the communications programme executed in print, digital, advertising to apparel outcomes.

Design for events require flexible solutions that can be tailored for a range of shapes and sizes. We endeavoured to build into our outcomes a suite of flexible visual assets that allows the design to make the best of every application.

We believe that colour is one of the key elements employed in a campaign and after campaigns using of red, green, yellow, pink, blue it seemed orange was next. Orange and black are great colour combination to work with, however the shift in the orange‘s chroma, or brightness varies greatly from spot colour printing and 4 colour process printing – it is a colour that needs close attention.

The campaign in 2008 was developed around the idea of it being a project, or an event in its own right and we have extensively collaborated with Fringe. It is not your typical designer and client relationship — rather than setting briefs and doing work on computers, it is working out the opportunities and executing how to exploit them. A very nice way to do work.

In the wake of the campaign the studio developed in 2007, we set out to devise an image that contrasts, rather than compliments. 2007’s iconic graphic was superceded by a photographic/illustration. A linking factor is the two colour palette. Many of the print outcomes are executed with two colour printing.

The concept in 2008 explored the idea of alter ego. We explored the methods and means that people use to achieve their alter ego. We sort out the simplist of methods of acting out alter ego, something everybody could do – putting hands, or something as simple as a blank piece of card in front of one’s face, creates an interruption where a new form is allowed to take place. We projected onto the masks a set playful images of representing visual, physical, sound, written digital forms. The text boxes reference the technology tools that many of us use to shape the contemporary world. An image with an image inside another image is often a typical and complex mode that people use to interact with the world around them.

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