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.
COFA Annual 2007
At around August 2007, we were participating in the design and production team, developing graphic identity for the graduation exhibition of the College of Fine Art - COFA Annual. This project includes the overall concept design along with graphic identity, poster templates as well as dvd & web interface designs.
Following the tradition of the COFA Annual since 2002, the identities has been built around the alphabet A, which contains a dual meaning as the last letter of the faculty in short form.
Within the team, we were working collaboratively with two designers, Hiro Lai and Yosuke Ando, on developing the concept and the alphabet A. (Both of them are our very good friends as well.) So, here comes the conceptual thinking: the overall concept for this year’s COFA ANNUAL is making the mark.
Mark making is an act of showing presence and also a representation of a start or completion and hence a stamp with ink bleed has been introduced. The stamp itself represents COFA while the ink represents the graduating students from the faculty. Therefore, the two elements work together to produce a mark, much like the relationship between COFA and its students. Furthermore a stamp can be referred as a symbol of certification; a certification from COFA to its graduating students. When the stamp is used, the ink is absorbed and spreads on the paper, in which the ink spreading symbolises the students’ growth from COFA to the creative world.
We have also proposed two other versions of the logotype for the event:
We actually really like the dark gray ink version out of all since we enjoy reading through the subtle layering of the alphabet A; in which best represent the process of slowly revealing the depth of the characters on both the event and the graduates. However, after a group meeting along with the marketing team of the faculty, the group came to a conclusion to have a more ‘eye-catching’ identity for the year, which we respect the decision.
As you will see, in the following, the letter A are also being used as a stand alone elements in all the associating materials for the event.
A0 poster template designs:
Shown above are the template designs for all participating graduates covering all the variations of the degree program.
Those template designs has to be in consideration of a standardised hanging system for exhibition installation, which you can see the gray area on the top and bottom of each template and they will not be printed. A thin outline has also been introduced to indicate a working area for all designers in order to unify most of the graphical elements for this annual event. Once again, the line will not be printed.
You can see here in the two photographs showing those poster templates being used in context during the exhibition.
COFA Annual 2007 web interface and dvd interface:
If you didn’t have the chance to visit the exhibition or get your hands on the dvd/catalog on the opening night, you can visit the COFA Annual 2007 website for more information where you shall see the interface we designed as well.
The event dvd/catalog was actually available on the opening night which features all the participating graduates’ works with the interface and layout we have designed.
An image of a textured paper has been applied within both the dvd interface as well as the web interface designs. The paper was actually the one that we were experimenting with real ink to understanding the ‘ink-bleeding’ behavior.
The dvd interface features a sliding menu located on the left of the screen with the alphabet A displaying on the top of the strip. When the cursor reaches the strip, it activates the menu and it slides out to allow more options for navigating the content through name search or choosing from all discipline. The motion reflects the act of revealing and further understand the underlying characters within the event.
We would like to thank our good friends Yosuke Ando, Hiro Lai and the design & production team as well as everyone who helps to pull the whole event together.
ConnectED 2007
Shown in the following is the A2 information poster design for the 4th year studio project exhibition associating with The ConncetED 2007 International Design Conference on Design Education.
The exhibition was a showcase of a selected projects (about 30 of them) from the graduating design studio of 2007. We were asked by the School of Design Studies of COFA to come up with a poster to promote the exhibition as well as a piece that functions as an information panel for the opening of the exhibition.
We were working in collaboration with our good friends, Yosuke Ando, on this poster.
Note: We can’t take credit for the design of the line graphics and the logotype. It was provided by the designer (sorry for our bad memories.) who developed the graphic identity for the entire event.