Trees for Children 2008
We were very proud to be invited by the Australian artist Evan Kaldor and designer Liz Williamson to participate in the Trees for Children 2008 charity fund-raising project. Trees for Children has became an annual event of the Sydney Children’s Hospital after successful achievements in previous years.
Teamed up with the former Australian Rugby Captain - George Gregan, we then interpreted his thoughts and views on the festive season to develop the concept & graphic elements for this collaboration. The following are the original paragraphs received from the George Gregan Foundation.
For George, Christmas really is about family. George and his wife Erica have three children - Max (7yrs), Charlie (6yr old girl) and Jazz (4 year old girl) - and family is very important to them. For visual purposes the children are a real combination of their parents (Erica’s father is Chinese, her mother white Australian, George’s mother is African and his father white Australian). Max is a combination of both Erica and George, Charlie has inherited the Chinese gene with long straight black hair and Jazz has has a full African afro.
George spends a great deal of time away from his family and always has due to his rugby commitments. The family have just enjoyed their first extended period together when they spent 12 months France whilst George played for a local French club. He is now playing rugby in Japan and will spend until March 2009 away. He will be home briefly for Christmas.
His time at home is precicious and Christmas is all about being with his children, Erica’s family and his own family. The family gather at George and Erica’s home and the festive season is about truly being together, sharing great food and wine. It is George’s only time to relax away from the pressures of a professional sporting life.
George is an incredibly private person and you will not ever see a photo of George with his family ont he front cover of New Idea or the like. And Christmas is an extension of that privacy - the chance to be with his family in their own home, enjoying each others company.
From that, we decided to develop the conceptual framework through looking into relationships, connections; centered with the festive season’s theme and the Gregan family. The following is how we look at the design.
The idea is based mainly on having a closely knitted pattern wrapping around the object; which symbolise the family members Erica, Max, Charlie and Jazz surrounding, hugging and being with George both emotionally and physically. The designed object has also suggested that on each side of the four surfaces, a member of the family will be visually represented. In terms of type treatment, solid and outlined triangular shapes have been introduced to represent all the alphabet A and at the same time, through having type as imageries, a relationship between the graphic and the designed object has been established.
After that, we have applied the neutral grey as the main colour for the pattern. The colour green has been used to fill in the outlined triangular shapes for the selected family member on each surface while the colour red is being introduced for the remaining. Through the use of colours and a specific typographic layout, a festive yet conceptual typographic pattern has been created.
Note: We have to admit that it is very fortunate the alphabet “A” appears in each family member’s name. The design would have been completely different and the relationship between the graphic and the object would changed without this factor.
In the end, the typographic pattern design has been hand painted & stenciled with acrylics onto the tree template by us. Lastly, model making is fun and so during the development of this project, we have created a couple scale models to visualise how the design would look like when completed. Moreover, a lo-tech documentary has been made, recording the production process in our studio.
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Trees for Children 2008 for Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick.
20th Nov - 4th Dec, Customs House Forecourt, Circular Quay, Sydney CBD
Special thanks to Evan Kaldor, Prof Ian Howard, Liz Williamson, Matt Myers & Meagan Bryant.
Tree templates by Greg Hajdu, set designer at Sydney’s Fox Studio.
Note: All the trees are for sale and all proceeds from the sale will go to the hospital.
Please contact the Sydney Children’s Hospital Foundation for further information.