A Valentine’s Day post

Valentine’s Day is as good as any day to inspire a little love and adventure in the community.

To celebrate our new name and adventure (Work Art Life by Studio Pip and Co. : more to come soon) we are calling artists, designers and creative people to create an A3 poster run, and post up in their local area for everyone to enjoy on and around 14.02.2012.

Entry is free. Spread the word. Take back Valentine’s Day – its the thought that counts.

Email us, FaceBook, Twitter – Be my real Valentine’s, make create, tweet yours and found pix of – Be my real Valentine – posters discovered on 14.02.2012. #bmrv2012

Download brief and sample poster here

For examples – see our effort last year here.

The rough – a typical corner in a café displaying free cultural promos

Come see our exhibition, bring friends, colleagues, interested strangers – a slice of OZ design awaits

26 August to 17 September 2011
Wed to Fri – 11.00am to 6.00pm
Sat – Noon to 5.00pm

Lamington Drive
15-25 Keele Street, Collingwood, Australia 3066
Telephone 03 8060 9745

Visit Lamington Drive here

Exhibition statement :

A memory of (print) design envy
1988 to 2011

Every year millions of tonnes of printed matter are developed to sell, promote, inform, catalogue, tell stories, or all of the above. A small percentage of this printed matter satisfies commercial needs while exploring creative practice.

The appeal of the projects displayed depends on the viewer. Beyond an individual’s likes or dislikes, these works demonstrate special qualities of creative play, idea generation, craft and detailing of image, form, type and layout development that makes them shine from the rough.

Australia lacks a diverse resource of its graphic design. This memory of printed work provides a rare opportunity to take in the diversity, vision, expression and skill developed by a truly talented bunch of (mostly) Australian designers and imagemakers. An Australian creative style, or way of making work may well be here somewhere.

Andrew has collected this work over 20 years. It was available for free (from cafes and bookshops), sent in the post, gifted, stolen, or purchased (for less than fifty dollars). This collection has the odd Studio Pip and Co. project for the cultural and design sectors, or it has been influenced in some way by these works.

This collection (be it a small slice) has no awards or formal merits attached to it, it is here for your enjoyment and reference.

I dedicate ‘Diamonds in the Rough’ to all my peers and their ability to consistently make fine and (often) enviable work. Aa

Production notes :

Lamington Drive contacted the studio in February to hold an exhibition mid year. Many ideas were tossed about, a studio retrospective etc, however in an age that seems to be about the self, liking something and generally placing oneself in the middle of everything, we struggled to find an idea that would appeal to us, as well as a broad audience.

Months passed nothing came to mind, however during the process of getting together content for desktop magazine a conversation with Stuart Geddes (Chase & Galley), over a beverage or too, hatched an idea which fit our needs and was accessible to a broad group of people. The exhibition was originally going to be called – So Annoying – an in joke with Stuart and a few other designers, however, an in joke, is a ‘in’ joke and new name was needed.

Diamonds in the Rough came together when working out the headline for our desktop 16 page pictorial piece. Diamond Dogs by David Bowie was kicking around the studio, and a colleague Marco Gjergja had recently name his studio Sawdust & Diamonds in homage to alt pop harpist diva Joanna Newsom. Diamonds seemed to need a context, home or presence.

The studio pulled together the exhibition in three weeks, off the back of Andrew’s Sydney talk, August 01. A Sydney now Berlin based colleague, Graeme Smith, used hand bag sealing process for a flat paper based exhibition for the Italian Chamber of Commence. We thought this process would be perfect for hand sealing, protecting and presenting physical printed objects across a range of sizes and thicknesses.

The project started with reviewing, sorting and shortlisting hundreds of pieces. After inspecting the space we felt there was an opportunity to present the objects hanging in the space, rather than being hung on the walls. With the print pieces in hand and some ideas, a plan was made, materials were sort, 8 to 14 objects were sealed in purpose made bags sealed to a sturdy yet simple coat hanger, 30 hanging bags were made including the prototypes.

A simple rig was purpose made for the space defining a 24 point 80 x 80 cm grid, the structure was made on site, garden hooks completed the presentation, allowing each hanger to move yet full into uniform perpendicular line. Flat A2 posters devised for the Desktop 25 year edition wallpapered on the short walls, Andrew handed applied the show graphic freehand, with a roller and a ten of red acrylic paint. Three days of collating, sorting, source and bad making and a day of assembly, brought together this simple yet very effective public show. A special thanks to Sam, Aimee and Piers for all your help.

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Set up images

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Opening night and Desktop 25 years launch, 01 September, images by John Deer with thanks

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Documentation images by Lynton Crabb with thanks

The creative brief from the AGDA website :

The theme for the 2011 AGDA Poster Annual is “Inspired by Music”. Entrants are invited to be inspired and interpret this theme however they wish. Music is perhaps the oldest of humanity’s creative endeavours. It is both an art form as well as a type of communication. The world over music is a source of entertainment, celebration, worship and expression. The diversity of music reflects the soul of the world and binds us all. We all experience music at emotional and cultural levels. It offers us our finest moments and records our trials and our joys. This is the power that we hope you can capture.

We ask you, the entrants, to create posters about whatever you like. You can discuss whatever you wish as long as your subject matter stems from music in some way. Your approach may be as broad or as narrow as you wish. Your poster could be a portrait of your favourite composer or a social protest inspired by a song lyric – it is up to you.

Ask yourself questions. What is personal to you? How does music affect you? What do you love? Who inspires you? How do we use music to make social and political statements? How do we socially connect? How has music affected humanity? What historical moments are punctuated by music? Who are our heroes? What is the significance of our composers, our poets, our dancers? What are our stories? Where have we been? Where are we going?

Our response :

Open creative briefs often require a process of execution rather than spending hours and hours thinking about it.

We are often lost in music and we took the opportunity to make a poster while being in one of these moments. On our morning walk a month or so ago, we tasked ourselves to find five similar objects within a set time frame of five minutes and use these objects to make a poster.

In our five minutes we found five Slurpie drinking straws littering our path, while listening to Handshake Drugs by Wilco, off the album – Ghost is Born. We took them back to the studio, cleaned them up, but not too much, scanned, retouched and developed compositions which are adaptions of the five line music stave, these compositions are devised and inspired from the visualisation of soundwaves. The results trips into the visual scape often explored by Swiss designer Niklaus Troxler.

Best of luck to the 593 entrants and cheers to Mark and all his efforts, results will be announced in September.

visit the AGDA poster annual here

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

In contemporary times print publishing is under increasing pressure to fund publication production as readership and advertising dollars fragments and spread thin across print, digital and sponsorship media. The budget for bringing such a specialised category together every month is a case of working with shoe strings, sows ear, making, improvising, being in tune with and utilising opportunity as it happens.

In mid March the project started with a three hour meeting where we explored ideas and mapped of what could be end up being editorial pieces. We were convinced that this issue would be better served the reader by creating a snap shot of 2011 rather dipping into the past. The content plan we developed explored aspects of contemporary design and creativity today, illustrated through the stories and ideas of a range a designers in all stages, places and moments of the their careers – genders, ages, arty practices to commercial studios, educators to students. We wanted to explore the bigger stories of design practice, rather than showcase the latest hot looking job or designer.

During the months that passed some narratives remained the same, while others were realised on the run – which is typical of the process of the how our studio produces work; some projects are worked out in the briefing meeting and some ideas are in the processor for weeks, months.

The idea of the issue being a time capsule of ink and paper came to Andrew on the train ride home on the day of the half day workshop. A late night message left on Brendan’s voice mail raving – time capsules and the shifting notion of the physical capsule object, eventually ended up with an idea that was present yet absent.

In terms of people mix we did our best to present a diverse group of people. We contrasted the world famous with the emerging, art based designers with highly successful commercial operators, designers who make images compared with designers who make forms, designers born in Australia and abroad, designers who are work in studios, in education, business owners, working abroad, employees to being in between jobs, women and men who across a range of age groups from as many corners of Australia as we could muster – Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney to Hobart.

Launch article by Ray Edgar – The Age, 27 August 2011

The project brought with it many great side projects, an extraordinary piece of student research, an exhibition of printed matter, an investigation of love projects, a company that works with time, an essay asking if the brand is dead? A snap shot of six designers and their head spaces circa 2011, a 20 years pursuit of alternative type design and insights from designers explore a favourite project to an object devised to create a instant and lasting impression, and impressions on Australian design.

The cover was shot by Lynton Crabb in Andrew’s front yard on a crisp winter’s morning. Out of the hole floats a plume or cluster of idea bubbles leaking for our freshly buried capsule – which was illustrated by Andrew. The streaking type on cover is in silver anniversary grey, we chose the font Chicago because of it being one of the first system fonts used by early Macintosh computers. Chicago is also an awkward, ugly font that needs a regular airing. The bubbles creeping into the masthead breaks the style rules of Desktop’s masthead and Lou from Desktop add a special spot uv layer of the mast head type and bubble to give the cover extra zing. The text on the cover Andrew wrote as holding text. The guys at Desktop liked it enough to leave it word for word. The work Frenemy is a real word and is a recent addition to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The lift out poster was pulled together over a weekend. The 180 images featured are mostly taken by Andrew on his iPhone over the last few years. The captions were written late into a Saturday night, while watching ABC TV’s music programme called Rage – the guest programmer was French producer and DJ Martin Solveig – highlight clips were PRINCE – Purple Rain and SUPERGRASS – Pumping On Your Stereo. We wanted to make a poster that may offer some insights, rather than show off our creative prowess. The poster is a stream of top of mind thoughts in relation to ideas, observations, creative practice and life grabs – it’s a chart of inspirations and shout outs. Flat copies of the poster are available from the studio.

The edition has already enjoyed reviews in Broadsheet, The Design Files and a range of blogs and forums however the best feedback of this effort came from an internal email by Niche media’s MD – Paul Lidgerwood:

From: Paul Lidgerwood
Date: 24 August 2011 9:49:36 AM AEST
To: all niche
Subject: I finally get it!

One extraordinary issue, being the September Anniversary Issue, has finally got my incredibly slow mind around what Desktop is all about. I can now see how it inspires, how it teaches, how it improves and nourishes, how it flows and why if I was designer I would pour over it cover to cover. I can also finally see why if I was a business trying to connect with designers Desktop would be top of my schedule.

The epiphany was this issue and my hat is well and truly doffed to the collective brilliance of all involved-Brenden, Ali, Lou, Danielle and Studio Pip and Co. Well done guys you have made sense of the muddle – keep it up!

Paul Lidgerwood
Managing Director

As mentioned in the printed object it was a privilege to work with a Brendan and Louise at Desktop on this issue, numerous hours are devoted every month when plans, editors, writers, photographers and production teams meet and are shaped by detailed editing, review and art direction.

We dedicate this project to everyone that contributed to the project : Lynton, Holly, Lisa, Warren, Garry, Jason, Anita, Amanda, Graeme, Sam, Melanie, Dan, Anthony, David P, David L, Mimmo, Kate, Brita, Alex, Sarah, Sam, Pip, Will, Henry and Toward – who’s generosity and time makes this publication a priceless hunk of ink on paper.

If you want to understand the potential for a graphic designer to take their works to new places this issue propositions the designer as writers, inventors, researchers, analysts, event organisers, crafts people, curators, entrepreneurs, travelers, networkers, publishers, image makers to editors. We hope that you enjoy this edition, we hope that the bigger stories of design practise come to the fore and inspire readers to explore ideas, vision and thinking outside of the normal pursuits of being a creative designer.

This edition is a standard run, so get in quick as their will be no reprints.

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Production images follow

The first meeting in April 2011 with Lou and Brendan

Brendan’s content map

Lou's content map

Andrew’s initial Time Capsule cover sketch

Desktop space at Niche

Diamonds in the Rough test image

Pre Diamonds in the Rough photo set up

Diamonds in the Rough photo set up

Riding Lou on the computer during the final edit stage

The cover in the flat book

Text page in the flat book

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Sample spreads, be it poor images apologies for the array of grey backgrounds (v annoying), from the final printed publication

The Burger Monster brand change over has begun – brand, look and feel, image making, stationery, packaging, interior and signing. The process is a gradual one and elements are coming together staged and considered.

Twelve years ago Ashton left Sydney to turn his first decade of design practice on its head, with the hope of finding something more than doing work, making money and moving up. Exploring design practice, Ashton has put together a dialogue which investigates change, freedom, curiosity, along with other tall stories, pictures of design outcomes, half baked manifestos, tales of excess and assorted heady exaggerations.

When
Monday 1st August 2011
6pm for 6.30 start

Where
Australian Museum
Entrance in William Street
Corner of College and William St

Tickets
Members $30
Non members $55
Student members $20
Student non members $30

Enquiries – Anita Lyons 9975 4008

The Abbotsford Club – café type mark

The Abbotsford Club – café graphic mark – coat of arms version

The Abbotsford Club – café graphic mark – corporate version

The Abbotsford Club – café graphic mark – gang version

Stamp, stamp

The Abbotsford Club/ Identity / Melbourne
Brand variation / type marks / graphic symbols
colour and mono / applied to bill folds, cards, advertising signing, instant print
Developed 2011 / 12 week project

Coffee Supreme has opened a new café on their factory site. With the coffee roastery only metres away from café, the coffee experience can’t get any fresher. The name of the café was an invitation to explore the types of club and their potential brand design. Melbourne is a city of clubs, clubs of all classes are dreamed up and operate with passionate members. We imagined and propositioned three types of club “a members only institutional club” like The Melbourne Club, The Savage Club, or The Athenaeum Club, ” “a sports clubs” like the MCC or Carlton Blues and “a street gang” like the Sharpies or Sharps. However the only membership requirement is a love for fine coffee. We imagined the club traveling through time and class, taking on several graphic personals – the traditional, a sports feel, and the street.

Elements of this brand development process has found their way on new apparel, signing and packaging that we have developed for Supreme over the last six months.

The Frank Classic/ Identity / Melbourne
Brand variation / type mark / graphic symbol
mono / applied to bibs, cards, instant print
Developed 2011 / 6 week project

The Frank Classic is a brand developed for an event. Frank is a keen skier and his celebration is skiing classic race. The mark was applied on invitations, bibs, and trophies.

Patricks Australia/ Identity / Melbourne
Brand variation / type mark
mono / applied to stationery, cards, brochure
Developed 2011 / 12 week project

Patrick Australia is one of Australia’s oldest badge and premium manufacturers. We were tasked to develop a brand that is a modern old school type mark based upon their existing brand. The ribbon motif is key to the execution, the company name including the legalese shaped the custom type outcome.

Thank you to all our commissioning clients.

The studio has been consumed by Melbourne boutique roaster – Coffee Supreme. The second skew of their coffee range – the 250g and 500g bags are out in the café space for one and all.

The studio is responsible for the production – research and development, concepts, prototyping, image making to artwork, along with regular client commentary. This round of packaging was designed to work in with the café interior, whilst also having a bold retail presence. There is one image outcome in the range. The studio produced a comprehensive pattern range based upon the coffee plant. Several final patterns have been developed, which have also been applied to the 1kg skew.

The packages are hand assembled at the factory and the stitched in card, can be put in the customers coffee pot to confirm bend and roasting batch.

Thanks to Supreme again for keeping our communication process fresh.

Cruden Farm is one the world’s most revered private gardens. Featured in the television programme – Around the World in 80 Gardens – by British gardener and broadcaster Monty Don, the garden is a popular destination for gardening enthusiasts visiting the region. Briefed to complete a website which communicates general facts and sites of garden for visitors and fact finders. The studio spent eight weeks completing this project undertaking design, approvals, gathering content, website development and testing. Thanks to the Cruden Farm team and The Mighty Wonton for all your assistance.

See the brochure we developed here

Visit the Website here