Our new home

After much procrastination, we’ve finally finished designing and building our brand new website. It houses everything you can see here, plus stories gathered from our numerous talks & lectures over the years, and a shop where you can own a little piece of Design & Opinion, for a fraction of the price of a magazine redesign or corporate strategy.

Although our new site is now the best place to keep up-to-date with us, we’ll continue to update this space with all the latest as well, so you can keep track whichever way you prefer.

We’d love to know what you think of our new online home, so drop us a line!

Disrupting evolution

When CSIRO needed to engage staff in an upcoming merger between two divisions, they called on Primed to help facilitate the process. As Primed’s strategic partner, we were called on to create a suite of materials to convey this message in a positive and empowering way. Oh, and whatever we produced also needed to work as a public-facing campaign as well. Potentially a difficult task!

As we all know, knowledge is power. So what better way to help staff (and the general public) feel in control than by equipping them with the full story—not just relating to the merger and what it would mean for them, but going back—way back—to where it all began.

The resulting narrative, based around the notion of ‘disruptive technologies’, mapped the history of CSIRO—from humble beginnings to a world-leading scientific institution that continues to shape the way we live. Built around solid facts and statistics (something close to CSIRO’s heart), the animation we developed took viewers on a ride through time, illustrating how CSIRO has continued to evolve technology through disrupting the norm—thereby creating new norms. This macro view of how ‘disruption’ has been at the core of CSIRO’s ethos from the outset provided a natural segue to a more internal focus, looking at how disrupting internally (in this case by merging two divisions into a single new division) was equally core to the ongoing evolution of this great institution. This took the form of a printed graphic frieze, taking the story into the future and placing it firmly in the hands of the people involved.

The results speak for themselves—the unveiling of the animation (played to a room full of hard-core scientific and computer engineers) was met with a standing ovation. You can’t ask for much more of a positive or empowering experience than that.

Whilst the animation (top) focussed on a macro story, the accompanying print piece took the view closer, to the
internal decision-making process behind the creation of a new division. In this way, both the staff and the general
public were able to be informed and engaged with the process in ways that were specifically tailored to them.

Primed for culture change

During the process of many of the publication redesign projects we’ve undertaken, it’s become obvious that the single-most influencing factor deciding whether the result was successful or not is the client’s willingness—and ability—to embrace change. And not just in a design sense, but in a whole business sense as well.

Primed is an organisation specialising in large-scale culture-change management, who use a process of ‘educational drama’ (a combination of acting, facilitating, filming, coaching, designing, visualising and most other ‘ings’) to enable people on both sides of change—instigating and receiving—to experience the best possible outcomes.

As Primed’s ‘strategic partner’, we regularly bring their varied programs to life, using a combination of storytelling, information design and multimedia. The briefs range from creating the look and feel of an entire event, to forming the underlying narrative which captures the essence of the message being conveyed, to developing quirky and surprising ‘takeaway’ items for event delegates, to designing materials for ongoing internal use. Clients have included Telstra, PepsiCo, NSW Maritime, Mission Australia, The University of newcastle and The University of Technology, Sydney.

We thoroughly enjoy our ongoing relationship with Primed. It’s a rare privilege to work on projects which are consistently challenging and surprising—not just for our clients, but for us as well.

This ‘organisational flowchart’ created for The University of Newcastle maps the (somewhat farcical)
process of changing a lightbulb—illustrating the pitfalls of bureaucratic management styles.
Many of our print pieces work in tandem with bespoke animations (see below).

We designed a chart displaying a series of ‘signal flags’ for NSW Maritime, demonstrating the desired
attitudes towards significant impending structural changes. The chart was laminated and attached to a
rope tie—so there’d be no risk of the message being lost at sea.

Our first collaboration with Primed was for a highly topical conference on water sustainability in Perth.
Creating this ‘Wet Australian’ tabloid in the style of the region’s biggest paper was the natural solution, not least
because we’d just helped redesign the real one. As well as designing this piece, we wrote all the articles as well—
a veritable feast of poo jokes and bad puns, and up to that point, a personal career highlight. 

It's all about the experience

As well as running large-scale projects from start to finish, we often collaborate with other creative teams to help bring a process to life. A little while ago we worked on a number of such assignments with UX experts (should that be uxperts?) Meld Studios, to essentially put the final skin on their bodies of work. The projects we worked on involved visualising complex research, strategic planning, corporate structure and experiential framework, for national and multinational companies in transport, education, property and finance. In plain english that means Meld did an awful lot of research, strategy and planning, and we got to do all the fun stuff — creating mega-graphics, magazines and app interfaces.

As much as we’d like to feature each of these projects on its own, the confidential nature of most of them means we can only share a little peep through the keyhole. If you'd like to find out more about how we collaborate on projects like these, drop us a line via the contact form on the right-hand side of this page.

A small selection of the ‘skins’ we created for Meld’s impressive bodies of work.

ARV Shine

ARV is one of Australia’s largest providers of aged care, and with the population in general getting older there’s more demand for their services than ever. Their flagship publication ARV Shine presents a mix of ARV’s involvement in the community, a showcase of their properties and services, and a broader look at both issues and opportunities for senior Australians. The content is designed in an easy-to-read (but not boring) way, with deliberate choices in typefaces, colour combinations and imagery that give readers a bonafide magazine experience without being patronising. In particular, the absence of generic ‘dynamic senior lifestyle’ stock imagery helps create a magazine that is truly refreshing in this market, which along with thought-provoking content, really Shines.

Using ‘conceptual’ rather than literal imagery for the cover steers this away from cliché. Portraits are intimate
and warm, and are given prominence—the residents are celebrated

Sometimes an infographic tells a story the best

Feature stories focus on wider topics of interest, but with relevance to ARV

What's next in digital

The theme of the 2011 ninemsn Digital Marketing Summit was all about being a step ahead. To enhance this theme, an animation to open the summit was developed with milkmoney films, centering around the incredible advances in digital technology over recent years. On their own, the statistics are impressive. But visualised in a series of interconnected infographics, they are brought to life in a way that truly reflects the notion of being ‘what’s next’.

This short film demonstrates the impact that can be achieved simply by telling a statistical story—we think you’ll agree it’s infinitely more engaging than a spreadsheet could ever be.

What is a designer?

Each year (or so), Billy Blue (the organisation behind a number of Australia design schools and initiatives) produce BBetween magazine—a journal inviting practiontioners from the design community to submit essays around a set theme. Issue 4 focussed on Design Thinking, with one of the suggested topics centering around the notion of communication. Because designers are supposedly the link between an original message and its communication to a wider audience, it seems ironic that the one thing they can’t seem to communicate clearly at all, is exactly what it is they do. Upon raiding the websites of 101 Australian design companies, and analysing all the words in their ‘about us’ statements, some interesting discoveries were made—and ended up in these infographics. Sometimes it’s fun to have a laugh at yourself.

Each graphic centred on a different aspect of design—from descriptions, to specific products and services...

...to the intangible, to outcomes and personality. And at the end of the day, we were no closer to
identifying exactly what it is we do. But at least we know it looks good in an infographic.

50 years of milestones

In 2008, AJ Lucas—an Australian infrastructure, construction and civil property company—celebrated their 50th anniversary. The annual review for this year needed to be designed ‘with a difference’. The challenge was, what was the difference going to be? Along with the rest of the report, the logical solution was to create a timeline mapping the 50 years since AJ Lucas was formed, in the context of the rest of the world. This involved countless hours of research, fact-checking and of course lovingly crafting it all to fit into an A4 double-gatefold. The timeline includes such necessities as the winner of The Ashes, world oil prices, Australian governments, significant buildings, the average weekly wage—and the history of AJ Lucas of course.

The ‘regular’ part of the annual report included editorial pieces, commissioned photography and infographics,
to create an informative and engaging publication...

...but of course, the real prize was revealed when opening the ‘centrefold’—a detailed timeline of the past 50 years,
with almost everything you’d ever want (or not want) to know about almost anything you can think of.