PROJECT: Both the corporate & festival identity for the 2009 Melbourne Fringe Festival.
BRIEF: To solidify the notion that the festival is an organisation that continues to support independent artists all year round, not just for the duration of the festival.
COLLABORATORS: Melbourne design duo James Yencken & Jonno Bellew for Something Splendid.
Our aim was to develop a strong concept for the corporate identity that would allow the festival’s logo and imagery to grow naturally in consecutive years. Throughout the conceptual process it became clear that to accurately illustrate the Fringe philosophy there needed to be a strong reference to an underlying support structure: The foundation of the festival’s integrity as an organisation dedicated to nurturing independent arts in Victoria.
After an extensive period we discovered a visual correlation between an engineered geometric form & its relevance to the structure of the festival. Not only did the form represent strength & underlying artistic support but its variations and repetition also represented the collective involvement of the many volunteers & staff that contribute to the running of the festival. The geometric forms also convey a sense of community & public involvement that is a great embodiment of the Festival’s image.
The forms themselves are essentially pyramids that have been cut at different heights to create a series of six faceted shapes. The top facet being square, enabled us to use these three-dimensional shapes as pixels. When viewed from above the calculated arrangement of these shapes form an intriguing typographic system. The varying sized squares (top facet) can be arranged in ascending or descending size in order to create variation in density. When this system is applied to a typeface it results in a soft edged letterform that features a ‘fringed’ boarder not dissimilar to a halftone dither.
The festival identity was composed around a series of behind the scenes images depicting the physical creation of the forms. We took progress shots over the period of an afternoon, these images became the basis of the festival’s identity. Animation Studio XYZ also took a series of shots & created a stop motion animation for the festival’s television commercial.
Each year, as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival program, the Fringe team produce a furniture exhibition featuring selected works based around a theme. Fringe Furniture 2009 was held at the Melbourne Meat Market and showcased a collection of stunning design by new and established furniture designers.
‘As the world around us is engulfed in a light shade of grey, Fringe Furniture 2009 is set to radiate a lustrous shining light of optimism. This year’s theme, SILVER, encouraged designers to explore the visual, physical and symbolic properties of this bright metallic. The Arts House, Meat Market will host this dazzling melting pot of new ideas, integrating the iconic Fringe Furniture exhibition into the very heart of the festival.’ – Melbourne Fringe Festival 2009
Melbourne Fringe Creative Producer: Emily Sexton
Fringe Furniture Producer: Dan Honey
Catalogue design & exhibition identity: Taj Alexander
For more information visit the Melbourne Fringe Festival website.
Don’t Ban the Can (DBTC) is a non-profit arts and culture movement with an underground urban philosophy, formed as a result of harsh, unjust anti graffiti laws within Victoria, Australia. With a successful event in September 2008, the DBTC team presented an all-star lineup of artists from around Australia for their 2009 event. The Croft Alley Project gave artists the opportunity to create a large-scale, urban Masterpiece in the heart of Melbourne’s CBD. The team’s goal was to enrich Melbourne’s most neglected, persecuted and advantageous art form. The focus was to emphasize Street Art and Graffiti Art as an integral part of Melbourne’s cultural identity and to encourage people to learn more about the art form. The team of graffiti, street, stencil, sticker and paste up artists transformed the Croft Laneway from a dirty back alley into a creative, colourful and socially innovative thoroughfare visited by thousands of tourists each year.
The DBTC team is currently working on more exciting events for the future.
These limited edition Christmas cards were heaps of fun to make; I hope those of you who received one enjoyed them. It is a time consuming process but the reward is great. Look forward to next years as they will be bigger and better than ever! Prints like these are also available to purchase by commission. Have a super creative 2010.
I was recently asked to design the Monash University Art & Design Catalogues for 2008. Combining my knowlege of digital production and tactile design, I sought to produce two original publications that would excite and intrigue my audience. I achieved this without moving too far from the clarity of communication that a catalogue requires. If you are interested in seeing the catalogues or picking one up for yourself, contact Monash University Factulty of Art & Design in Caulfield.
CD Packaging for Promoe’s album, ‘The Long Distance Runner’. Produced to look like a shoe box for a pair of sneakers. Includes two CD’s and a folded poster.
Jekyll & Hyde is an experimental publication, made almost entirely by hand. Accompanied by my trusty sidekick ‘Dora’, the Olivetti typewriter, I hand typed and relief printed visual responses to the original novel ‘Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’, by Robert Louis Stevenson. The book is French folded and bound with a soft cover to enhance the reader’s textural experience.
Type O is a group of five designers who all share a passion for experimental typography. These include Taj Alexander, Ania Przybycien, Steph Mcglenchy, Pamela Paikopoulos & Jacinta Sobey.
‘Graphology’ is an experimental exhibition, inviting twenty-six distinguished characters to express an assigned letterform at our exhibition space as part of a typographic experiment. Graphology is the study of hand written typography, used extensively in criminal law to determine identity.
To promote the exhibition, large posters were pasted up around the city which featured the letter ‘G’ drawn by the Type O Collective. Invitations, were given out to the participants of the exhibition and a catalogue was also produced to be sold at the exhibition. In addition to the printed promotion, a film was also made of the poster application to promote the exhibition online.
