Posters for all occasions

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

No comments

Is the poster redundant? Is the poster a space that makes scense of the sponsors logos placement and hierarchy? One looks to poster design in Europe and dreams of medium that is larger than life. A communication space where the image is the message and the audience is visually enhanced — A mythical cast of thousands hungry for well craft messages and images that tap on the door of the art world and call out — is if there is a room in the inn for the night?

On the other hand the majority of Australian poster design is a canvas for a big picture; sometimes art directed, a headline, text unsuitable for reading in the poster format and let’s not forget a stable logos.

A good campaign is usually capped off with a poster. We design our posters to communicate and to be stolen. A good poster is a stolen poster. A poster that compels someone to break the law to decorate their homes and work spaces.

We love a good poster, we love making innovative and mimicked campaigns too.

2007 Fifth Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition poster

2008 Melbourne Fringe Festival posters

2007 Melbourne Fringe Festival posters

2007 Moonlight Cinema Poster

1998 Suits poster for Tomasetti Paper House

1999 Tune Out Poster by Australian Poster

2001 Hub poster for Saxton by Australian Paper

2001 Saxton Scholars Poster

2002 Saxton Scholars Poster

2005 Saxton Scholars Poster

2006 Saxton Scholars Poster

2006 National Institute for Design Research poster

2004 State of Design Exhibition poster

2004 State of Design Exhibition poster

2009 This Is Not a Design Market poster

10 Commandments of Copyright poster

2010 Planet Cup awareness poster

2009 Jardan Furniture poster

2009 Pearl Café take-a-way poster

2010 Optix Modern Manifesto posters

2009 Gunn & Taylor Guys and Toys poster

2010 AIA Extra/ordinary conference posters

No comments

The studio has been involved in volunteering, developing projects and producing communication work for design industry. On the odd occasion we are given the chance to make a poster, typically with next to no budget and wanted yesterday.

1998 AGDA NSW Events Calendar / Australian Graphic Design Association
Jan 1998 / Concept, publication design, writing, image making
Photography by Karl Schwerdtfeger
***  1998 AGDA Pinnacle  award

2002 AGDA National Awards Call for Entries poster / Australian Graphic Design Association / Febraury 2001
Concept, publication design, writing, image making
***  1998 AGDA Distinction  award

2005 AGDA National Conference poster / Australian Graphic Design Association / March 2005
Concept, publication design, writing, image making

2008 AGDA forty-eight poster / Australian Graphic Design Association / March 2008
Concept, publication design, writing, image making

2009 AGDA forty-eight poster / Australian Graphic Design Association / March 2009
Concept, publication design, writing, image making

2009 AGDA Beer O’clock poster / Australian Graphic Design Association / March 2009
Concept, publication design, writing, image making

2009 AGDA Optimism Conference poster / Australian Graphic Design Association
September 2009 / Concept, publication design, writing, image making

No comments

A poster is a space to give pleasure, call for action, evoke change. Given the right brief and more importantly a sensitive and exciting response, a good poster can change a whole lot of things. We often make posters for the sheer pleasure of making posters and sometimes we are invited to make posters for causes, ideas and occasions. We can’t help to see what happens.

1999 Studio Christmas card celebrating a change millenia

2005 Australian Poster Annual finalist

2006 AIGA NY, NY – Urban Tree Project submission

2009 Australian Poster Annual entries

2010 Australia Project entry

Outside of Australia, Australia is perceived to be one big tourist park filled with strange animals, poisons bugs, big skies, big rocks, sandy beaches, the pub, the boomerang, sporting heroes, the bush people, and long haul flights.

Tourists the world over love a bargain, love to barter, love the challenge of finding a good purchase. As a tourist culture it seems at times that everything in Australia is for sale, everything has a special price, everything is reduced to clear – be it Australia’s natural resources, local products and brands, ideas and innovations. Much of what Australia has to offer leaves its shores to be converted, profited from and or prosper – be it Australia’s coal, iron and timber; the sale of Australian brands – Vegemite to Orbital Engine; or the departure of great minds and talents of Germaine Greer, Barry Kosky, Robert Hughes, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and Elizabeth Blackburn.

The legend of colonial anti hero Ned Kelly is called upon in this poster. Kelly stoically peers out of a crude and barren world of “the sale” and invites to the viewer to discover and materialise Australian culture and identity.

Visit the Australia Project here

2009 IMEPO (migration) posters – Greece

Migration is a major influencing factor that has shaped, developed and formed Australian culture. Many people from the far corners of the Earth have migrated to Australia and called it home and with them they brought their tastes, smells, textures, sights and sounds. It is an exciting place to be, and the opportunity in such a space is enormous. Layer on layer of cultures have graced our shores and this drove us to think that migration, particularly in Australia is not a Baby Boomer, or a Gen X’er, or a Gen Y’er, moreover it is a new generation people – Gen Now.

The poster project had a life of its own, we embarked on photographing range of local people in Melbourne – Japanese, Anglo Celt, Philippines, New Zealanders, Welsh and Nepalese and layered them on a vale constructed from all of the borders of the world. The Gen Now brand was developed during the poster printing process for the Melbourne Museum of Printing fund raising project.

2009 Eyesaw Invitational, Sydney

Established in 2006 Eye Saw invites designers to respond to a theme in the poster format. Eye Saw is overseen by Mark Gowing Design – it is an invitational poster exhibition held in Omnibus Lane, Ultimo, Sydney.

This year the studio was honored to be invited to produce a poster for Eye Saw. The brief invited participants to consider the theme humanity/equity.

Posters design is an individual process and it is difficult to develop a poster image that speaks of the idea, means something to its designer and connects with an audience. We thought of humanity/equity in terms of grooming compassion, nurturing our hearts. Everyone knows that to care for a plant you have to think to water it regularly for it to grow, so we twisted this metaphor and invited viewers to nurture their hearts.

The poster was cost effectively produced as four A0 black and white plan prints with fine streams of fine silver light plastic streamers flowing from the watering can’s spout.

2010 Australian Poster Annual finalist

We were troubled by the latest Australia Poster Annual brief, the first paragraph in particular, as it seems to be again – too design sector focused – and not aligned with big picture issues such as:

• discovering Australian identity,
• the idea that everyone is now a designer,
• addressing public perception of design and their designers
• bringing about a discovery of the ways in which Australian designers solve design problems,
• helping clients tune into a locally developed product rather going overseas for creative outcome,
• the proliferation of the designer idea
• developing an Australian creativity position.

It is no secret that we feel that designers moan about on about how clients should understand design more, etc. We, as a practice, strive to find the balance between making work that works for clients, along developing a product that excites, inspires audiences and looks good.

It is concerning that our industry feels the need to write such briefs, and we believe that to bring about a positive change might be found by taking a lead from fine artists, fashion designers, chefs, coffee, wine makers, writers and musicians – who create, lure, attract, clarify, excite and challenge people with the an exciting product. Allowing then, the key drivers such as business innovation, thought leadership and cultural change will make sense to people who use it.

This situation reminds one of that old adage – quality relationships come about from inspiring respect rather than commanding respect.

Birthday posters are the perfect touch to any home spun celebration…

1 comment