Identity
Smart Transport - Site
The Smart Transport network emerged within the 2011 New Zealand election, to offer an insightful comparative overview on transport options for kiwi voters - 70% of whom weren't rapt with the idea of a refried utopia of 50's era private car dominance.
Basic branding, illustration, and an online presence with handy interactive infographics all came together inside of a week, as a well-oiled studio team showed some smart moves of its own.
With the backing of organisations like the WWF and Greanpeace, Smart Transport is looking to drive home the story of sustainable transport choices on a national and personal scale.
A rejuvenated identity to appeal to a younger demographic was the brief for the NZSO’s 2004 season design. With a brace of art music design already under my belt, this was something we were totally ready to take on.
Rather than get hung up on logos and colours and suchlike, we opted to get close up to present an understated, intimate, grainy portrait of the orchestra, and the drama of its real performance dynamics. This was directly opposite to previous visual promotions, which (with the exception of some steller work by Saatchis) had tended to come across as overly try-hard, and inconsistent.
The creative team included art photographers Wayne Wilson and Fiona Pardington, and a range of developers and production talent. Its probably fair to say that the results, applied through posters, programs, bus-backs and online, is still remembered by some as a high water mark in the NZSO’s visual design history, and after some, frankly fallow years, it's great to see the NZSO return to this approach more recently.
One World – Brand and Online Store
A new niche German e-tailer was less than impressed with state of ecommerce design at home, and decided to look further afield – starting with visual identity. We took our cues from client’s world music associations, and target market proclivities, but wanted to integrate a little urban euro grit. The simple letterforms of the word ONE took care of the former, but type was to be the vehicle for the latter. To see that through properly, we went as far as a roll your own typeface, borrowing a little from a long time gave grunge version of the classic Eurostile font – but little less hairy, and importantly simplified enough to work as an @fontface webfont.
Now Future - Site, ID, CRM
A call to develop an online presence and for arts-led projects addressing sustainability and ecology hit all the right spots for us. Even more so when Now Future was to break out with its Dialogues With Tomorrow program – essentially a series of encounters between cultural leaders and scientists, reflecting on the increasingly pressing environmental questions of the day.
After a number of design iterations, we came back to the original identity concept, which we’d set aside because maybe it was too simple, too easy. Of course simplicity as a design virtue isn’t lost on us, but it’s temping to want to complexify things. It’s nice when you’re right first time, it would be nicer still if you happen to realize it at the time! The site is one of our early Drupal builds, integrated with the powerful CiviCRM system for communications and audience management.
John Psathas - Artist Portal
In classical music terms, John Psathas is a Peter Jackson: an artist with a major international career, but who has chosen to continue working out of a low-key environment in Wellington. He may be best known for (along with Bjork) writing the ceremonial music for the 2004 Athens Olympics, heard by around 2 Billion people.
Capable of immense complexity, he has chosen to use his gift in a way that engages with a relatively broad audience, building on familiar touchstones of rhythm and tonality in fresh, invigorating new ways, and unlike many contemporary composers, speaking to the heart as much as the head. “Rather than build a standalone site, John sought a simple portal to the various existing avenues emerging to access his music: live, recorded, and as scores. His monumental contemporary concerto album View From Olympus, had just come out, which had an identity of it’s own, but one that he wanted to both reference and compliment. Yes that’s a thing we can do. So we did.
Singing Frog Music - ID, Site
OK, so the metaphor behind this label’s name might not be immediately obvious to the uninitiated: A singing frog is symbolic of the healing waters of the new rains called down by the frog’s song to end drought, implying enjoyment and abundance. But in identity terms we saw little fundamentally broken needed fixing.
But we set the logo type in a direction more evocative of the ‘world travelling’ sensibility associated with the music, and re-rendered the frog him/herself.
The site is testimony to Drupal’s suitability to sites both small and large – in this case the former was realized lickity spit, and still easy for the publisher to maintain.
