Campaigns / event projects

An arvo with Jardan / event design / Sydney
Event brand, image design and campaign
colour and mono / type design, print collateral, apparel, digital media
Developed 2011 / 12 week project

The studio has been working with Jardan Furniture for several years developing and refining their story, communication design and brand. While many Australian designers and manufacturers aspire to be European, American or Japanese, Jardan has found a space to explore an Australian design approach, which is familiar, unique, passionate – celebrating the best of living in an exotic place somewhere on the edge of the world.

For Saturday in Design in Sydney, the brief was an exploration of 70s living in Australia. The 70s was a time where bands played it loud and raw, a pash was a pash not a kiss, every weekend had a big domestic job (like blocking a fireplace or ripping out a bathroom), a game, a bbq, a beach, an arvo with mates, friends, the boss, or the inlaws.

Our response was a typeface inspired by teenage schools bags, 85 line per inch screens, tan marks, thumping bass drums, big hair entourages and words that are everything but work. What a fantastic project, thanks to the Jardan team for the opportunity, and cheers to over twelve hundred people that made their Saturday part of Jardan’s design.

Invites x three

Pole posters

Facade treatment

Jelly in action

Street posters

Crew tees

Take-a-way new range brochure

Open night street posters

The studio has participated in the AGIdeas open studio project for eleven years. We like to mix it up every year with special guests and collaborations.

This year Mark Gowing, from Mark Gowing Design dropped by the studio to help facilitate the making of a mural that will take over our meeting room. We also invited attending design students to contribute to a film making project exploring their thoughts and ideas of design practice.

Andrew conceived the projects and actions which was theme as – doing, making, talking and smiling and asking. Mark was charged with curating, photographing and making the posters, Sarah Furzer was also in image making mode and Lily our intern was helping too.

The night started with drinks and a briefing, each person had their photograph taken, Sarah then prepared over eighteen portraits – contouring, retouching and screening, Lilly then put each image on an A1 sheet, then each A1 sheet was carved up into four A3 sections. Sections where printed onto grey Optix paper in black and white. With 72 sections in hand, and fourteen students. Mark work shopped with the students what could be made. The group decided to create the word EVERYONE? Small groups where formed and each group had to make abstract letter forms our of the photographic sections and bank paper. During the mural making student briefly stepped out and gave a video interview. In forty minutes the mural was made and we finished off the session with pizza, more drinks and an open discussion.

Getting a feel for the images

Getting a feel for it

In the thick of smashing out letters

Mark in action

Kerning, pondering, pinning, adjusting

Some big dotty people

Letters "eVE" – can you see them

Facing west

Our transformed meeting room

A wonderful and surprising work was made and we all got to know each other a little better in three thrilling hours. Thanks again to all our new collaborators Nina Read, John Camilleri, Nastassia Williams, Stephanie Foti, Esther Parsons, Tara Nangia, Caitlin Mills, Jenna Foot, Stephanie Plain, Lauren Millard, Arwen Osborne, Anya Mielniczek, Danielle Capon and the AGIdeas crew who pitch in for us while we fluff about – being creative people.

Visit the wonderful work of Mr Mark Gowing here

Inspired by Paul Macartney’s – Maybe I am Amazed. Song lyrics, love graphics, six text posters, six graphic posters, half on Pink Optix, the other half on Baby Blue Optix, 180 copies, 90 Melbourne sites.

We commenced the project mid last week. We acknowledged that design required clear and uncomplicated design values. The work had to be made in house as it could be easily damaged, trashed and recycled. We started by developing an uncomplicated concept, dug through our visual archive, made some romance inspired visuals in half a day, fine tuned Friday and then installed on Valentine’s Day. There is plenty of overprinting for our friend Mr Tony-I-Design–Sans-Overprint ta boot.

Valentine’s Day has become a bit of retail sell fest. In response we thought we could put a feeling out there that celebrates the special connection that people make with each other, beyond the sex thing. The feelings, the thoughts, the physical, are things in a friendship that transcends retail fix its. We wanted to simply communicate these ideas to the public on V Day.

Lesson 1 /

Our binned posters

Even in the matters of love, commerce shows no mercy – unless one has a garage sale, or lost pet notice. It appears that the act of public notice, displaying flyers or posters, an act that has been around for two thousand years, is a highly controlled social medium and potentially not the space to create a grass roots campaign or action. The majority of the sites were killed by the street poster cartel, a very tidy job too, it seems well before 9am.

Our best intentions were there never-the-less. We enjoyed making a public action which brought together an idea with print, environment, digital media devised to create many public responses and interactions. Happy V Day everyone.

Françious inspired joyful divas

Gunn & Taylor approached us to assist with developing an end of year promotional campaign – last year Japan was top of mind, this year we flew across continents and landed in Montmartre, Paris.

Gunn & Taylor have a new very special foiling, embossing and die cutting machine (a packaging designers dream) that needed a work out. We dreamed up eight joyful party divas, which masqueraded in splashes of matt Yves Kline blue foil and delicate glimmers shot white foils contrasted with black and red printed on crunchy, toothy boards to fine uncoated papers. Invitations, event coasters, Christmas cards and other joyful printed surprises await. Another wonderful moment where communication, craft and print know how meets. Thanks again Mr Gunn and crew for a terrific collaboration.

Temporary moving poster

Ground stencils

Café in action

Barn door

Street brand campaign

Kere Kere brand and signing programme / December 2010
Brand, marketing proposition, sub branding, tag line, print, signing and advertising communication.

In early 2009 the studio developed a brand for a café situated with the campus of Melbourne University. The café started out as a cart and over time transformed into a purpose built structure.

Working with a modest budget we collaborated with the client to design it yourself, DIY – in this instance we devised look and feel, then supplied stamps, stencils and provided pdf art for posters, menus and tags. Time, guidance and the client helped realising the brand, communication and signing graphics execution. This project is a fine example of changing the relationship with design we are striving for with clients and their communication. Our dream is to work with big and small clients in a range of DIY capacities. Let’s go

Next stop is Kere Kere’s website, thanks to James again, wonderful collaboration.

Event brand, illustrated version

Folder, event programme brochure, invitation

Programme brochure that folds out to A2 wall poster

Café postcard, event brochure and invitation

Programme front cover and a selection of spreads printed using two colours

A one colour presentation folder that doubles as a wall poster

Competition t-shirts and carry bag

Chamber Music Australia (CMA) facilitates this region‘s largest and most revered chamber music events. The studio was tasked to develop a suite of communications items – from the brand to programme, apparel to advertising, signing to certificates and the web.

We wanted to put in place an image that positioned the event on the world stage — employing a confident and engaging graphic that suggests music, excellence and a sense of excitement.

The event programme was particularly rewarding project. With the guidance of CMA we assessed how the audience uses the programme and restructured the information to make the reading and review process intuitive, visually exciting, efficient with increased legibility.

The brand mark had several renderings a striking true mono solution, two to four colour outcomes and outcomes that are illustrated interpretations of the event graphic.

The event was declared the most successful competition on all fronts in CMA‘s twenty year history by the CMA‘s President Bill Forrest. With this result under our belts, we felt that it was timely to resign our eight year design and sponsorship partnership with CMA. We are focusing our energies on cultural partners in greater need of raising their brand and communications profiles in the community.

The studio ensured that materials had a extended usage life, building into the design outcomes multiple purposes and functions. We used sustainable printing, recycled papers and local manufacturing to produce desirable and highly reusable objects.

2002 Saxton Paper promotion campaign / Australian Paper / Jan 2001
Concept, publication design, writing, image making
***  2002 AGDA Pinnacle award

Product promotions to event designs… an Australian paper brand looking to express a unique version of Australia. Over ten years we have produced over 50 promotions designed to be a handy part of customers world.

The project covered a range of expressions – paper based promotions, non paper based promotions, and ongoing brand building to students.

We love it.

Brand, one of the many variations

Brand

A typeface developed for Saxton

Typeface detai

Pape rmini notpads

Visual diaries — Australian theme

2002 Saxton Scholars call for entires

Saxton Beauty visual journals

Saxton Scholars poster

Saxton visual journal poster — Get in touch with your inner pirate

Saxton type guide

2007 Saxton Scholars call for entries

2005 Saxton Scholars image

Australians have no shortage of things to do in the summer months. Along with festivals, sporting fixtures and the revered outdoor dinner party, our client Moonlight Cinema has to contend with the emergence of several new outdoor cinema concepts as well.

Moonlight Cinema is one of the studio’s most exciting projects since its establishment in 2003. This campaign has allowed the studio to demonstrate its abilities across a range of varying mediums to a broad and diverse audience.

Since August 2006 last year several hundred press ads have been developed and dispatched, street posters, bus shelter posters, a comprehensive website, banner ads, postcards, display packaging, venue signing, staff uniforms, pass out stamps, ticketing templates, invitations, comp tickets, season passes, PR images, and a season magazine has managed to keep us thinking, doing and breathing Moonlight Cinema.

In 2006/2007 the campaign grew ticket sales and website visits from 500k to 1500k visits over the season. We also were given the opportunity to develop the image and marketing materials for the 2007/08 season.

Moonlight tree people

Cafe postcard dispenser

Programme postcards

Moonlight magazine cover

Moonlight magazine spread

Pass out stamp

Staff t-shirts

Street poster detail, note the absence of the process yellow pass

Street poster

Twelve month sales targets for the product was met in six months.

When Spicers Paper came to us and said we want you to help us create a new coated paper, they meant it. Naming, identity, writing, imaging and expression in one project. We asked ‘what if?’ and Spicers said, 95% of the time, go for it. If a paper could be a person its first name would be Stephen.

This projects has attracted a range of design excellence awards, and since been adapted for the European market by the Robert Horne Group in the United Kingdom and our studio in Melbourne.

The product brand

Note pad covers

Note pad covers

Pads with pages

Sample tags

Paper swatches

Pocket process colour guide cover

Process colour charts

Print exploration piece

Street poster detail

2 x sheet, street poster

Café poster

Cafe poster

72 page programme cover

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.