Typography
Being a contracted ‘radiator’ for smart branding house Radiation, enabled a rare disciplinary purity – focussing purely on design – in particular typography as the agency coordinated strategy, copy, photography, and production throughout this brand rejuvenation for Optometry chain Visique. This was a project that made everyone involved feel good, that creative contributors were being perfectly supported and complemented by their peers. Also feeling good, we understand, the client, and customers.
Inspiration comes easy when the brief is to promote sharp new musical talent, as a call to design a number of concert posters for the School of Music’s excellent performance space. Even easer, when it’s in a good cause, such as the School’s fundraiser for the Save The Children Fund.
The title of the featured repertoire offered almost too much inspiration. Damn, nothing to do but run with it. Yes, it got some attention, though not everyone one was amused, we gather.
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.
How does a miniscule record label follow up a massive orchestrated production that has been sitting at the top of the classical charts for six months? With an intimate solo piano album by one of that last album’s featured performers.
Michael Houstoun has been long recognized as this countries best pianist – but mostly for ‘established’ traditional music. At a decisive point in his artistic career, Michael committed himself to something completely different.
Inland is an album of New Zealand composed music for solo piano, moving from mid 20th century lyricism, to the highly rhythmic and percussive, to quietly reflective, to a sizable portion of jazz pieces – and somehow, over this two disc set, holding it together.
Whirimako Black Album Design
It was a great honour to be asked to design a cover for Whirimako, one of THE truly great voices of Aotearoa, for Mai Music. Kura Huna literally means Hidden Treasures, which was a great springboard for the design approach to exploit the ‘slow reveal’ potential of the CD package format – is otherwise a very constraining format to work with.
From the outside, the die cut lettering of this CD sleeve reveals only a glimpse of Fiona Pardington’s wonderful photography. Inside we continued with this simple typography and black and white photography, to match the bare acoustic nature of the production.
