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Neue Project / New York

This particular poster design is currently on display over at the Neue Project.
Full story will be published shortly.

VA / Laneway Festival Market

In mid January of the new year, we were asked to come up with some ideas on printed materials for our friends over at VA for a special day-out at St Jerome’s Laneway Festival 2009, Sydney. A designers market was being put together by the team at TwoThousand along with the festival where VA will be having a stall named VA Select, providing some exciting products for the crowd.

After receiving much more information, this occasion for VA Select was actually an one-off appearance, aiming to promote their flagship store as well as sharing a selected range of products under a selected brand - in this case, a photography accessories label from Japan. We love the idea of relationships between mother and child, and in this case, a flagship store and an one-off select stall. Basing on this idea, we came up with an twin posters concept.

Two A1 size poster designs have been created which share the same grid, a certain amount of identical graphic elements while one of them were given a typograhic twist. For the first poster (below, on the left) contains background information about the name VA, what they do and why a stall at the festival. On the second poster, we have decided to maintain what we have done and to further experiment with the title and placement of the remaining elements.
Firstly, a paragraph of text on the label were being placed at the same text area as the first poster. After that , we turned the title ‘We Are VA Select’ into ‘We Select PowerShovel’ by introducing the positive/negative space, highlighting the name of the label.

Apart from the typographic design on the posters, we have also placed a strip of short diagonal lines at the bottom of each poster in which those lines were decomposed fragments from the original VA logo. The particular angle of those lines, when being put together, reminded us about those ‘Do Not Cross’, ‘Caution’ plastic strips and signs painted on roads which being used to catch pedestrians’ or drivers’ attention. We though this visual element was matching really well with the name of the event ‘Laneway Festival’ as well as the one-off appearance of the stall.

Shown above is a mockup image of how we see the twin posters concept working together, creating an visual excitement that would catch attention as well as providing the appropriate amount of information.

We would like to thank Nadia Saccardo, a wonderful friend/editor/writer of ours, for helping us on refining the text for these posters.

VA / On the move

After a complex yet successful re-branding project directed by Power Graphixx Inc and Gittz earlier in 2008, Via Alley (VA) is making another move - relocating to a better and bigger space in 2009. In order to spread the news among their supporters, we have collaborated with VA to design a poster announcing the big move.

Having given complete creative freedom by the team at VA, we then proposed a bold and playful concept for the design. As according to the re-branding project finalised earlier on, we have incorporated the new guidelines and hence led to the use of Helvetica for this project.

The poster consists of four main design elements. They are the new logo, a heading, paragraphs of text provided by the VA team and a diagonally placed arrow. The first three components are pretty much communicating directly about the news. When it comes to the arrow, we would like to let you know a bit more about it.

The bold and eye catching graphical arrow contains layers of meaning within the design:
1. Some of you might have noticed the relationship between the angle of the diagonal line and the new VA logo. The intension is to address the new graphic identities of the space as well as suggesting the new direction taken by the VA team.
2. If you are familiar with the area where VA is located (Darlinghurst/Surry Hills), you will know how hilly it is. While the text mentioned where the new location will be “up the hill”, the arrow is aiming to visually represent the content of the paragraphs to a certain extent.
3. When reading the poster at the current shop front, the arrow is pointing towards the new site where VA will be located in 2009.
4. Similarly, when looking at a map from an aerial view, the arrow is again pointing from the current location towards the new space of VA.

In other words, it is a site specific poster that we have designed. From the mockup image above, you can see that the (old) shop front, with the poster purposely covering the old logo of the store to announce the news officially to the public.

Digital output in A3 size on heavy gloss stock

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.

Published Art / Sign system

At the very beginning of 2007, we have started working on an experimental/flexible sign system design proposal for the specialised design bookstore Published Art, located in Surry Hills, Sydney.

The entire sign system was named ‘I am informative’. This is a sign system design that aims to solve the communication problems in the store that are operated only by a single staff person which, in this case, is the situation of Published Art. Sharon, the sole owner of the store, enjoys sharing her understanding on titles available to customers as according to what they are interested in. However, difficulty in verbal communication occurs when there is more than one customer in the store.

According to the specific style and characteristics of the site, the design execution of the system will appear to achieve harmony with the existing environment. Therefore, in this case, this particular proposal incorporates the ‘x’ of the store’s existing graphic identity, the layered heritage of the site location and the idea of highlighting in books that formed the conceptual framework.

We have to address here that this specific sign system design is not to replace the friendly greetings and recommendations from Sharon but to assist the way she has been communicating with customers in a supportive role.

We have also created an A0 size poster to document the study:

The poster is perhaps the only printed (on paper) component of the sign system design.
It aims to communicate and further explain the idea and the conceptual thinking behind the entire case study. Illustrative, 2-Dimentional appearance of the signages have been incorporated into the design along with abstract images documenting the sign system functioning in context.
We have approached the typographical layout of the poster in a visual representation of the concept where the signs and messages are being flexibly arranged and displayed within the bookstore.

The Typeface
Custom type and typographic treatment have been developed specifically for this sign system proposal. The forms and shapes of the crafted type were based on the principal typeface ISO NORM. Through referencing features of the space’s existing identity, characteristics such as the ‘x’ and stencil-like elements have been kept then further developed into a set of alphabets. To us, in the final solution we have successfully maintained a balance between graphic experimentation and communications, which also works harmonically with the existing brand identity and overall aesthetics with the sign themselves.

The Messages
Throughout the project, we have work together with the sole owner of the bookstore to develop a series of messages which will functions generally for a bookstore as well as establishing a closer relationship between the sign system, the store and herself.
You can see in the following all the messages we have created:

We would like to thank Sharon Tredinnick at Published Art in particular for her generous help throughout the development of this sign system project. In case you are wondering about those objects, they were actually handmade by ourselves as prototype. We did, however, outsourced the anodizing, cnc routing and laser cutting processes.

*Note: We did not work on the graphic identity of Published Art.