It’s that time of year again down in the Southern Hemisphere, the best of the best are on parade courtesy in New Zealand’s national design awards, Best. With the usual suspects notching up a handful of nominations each it’s also great to see some new smaller agencies coming through, along with, for the first time, a number of recognised names from over the ditch. With the awards beginning to develop a following overseas it would […]
Genuinely, there are few people whose work over the years I have admired more than that of Chris Mitchell. I’ve enjoyed it for its precision, consistency, refinement and transcending timelessness and, in simplest terms, utter beauty. The list of top notch agencies who have Chris in their little black books is remarkable and his work has won countless awards for the people who commissioned him. If you’ve never stumbled across the name before, the quickest glance at his […]
The streets of Auckland were awash with creativity this weekend as Urbis Design Day opened it’s doors once again. If you are unfamiliar with this gem of an idea, then I shall bring you up to speed. The event essentially centers around perfect pairings, with two companies coming together to form a duo. For the past few months this handpicked selection of creative and commercial twosomes have been beavering away, pooling their knowledge and expertise […]
Love is sometimes strange, I’m sure we all know that by now but what is StrangeLove? Well my friends, let me first set the scene. Marx Designwere tasked with packaging StrangeLove into a gift piece that cafe owners would want to display on their counter. The problem being, StrangeLove is in fact an energy drink. And we all know what that conjures up in a designers mind, 2 for $5 star bursts, bright shouty colours and vomit […]
Scottish-born Milan-educated illustrator come graphic designer Emily Isles began to work as graphic designer for a small publishing house called No Mad, designing city cultural guides for the creative community. That’s where she learned more about typography and grid systems, having started out with a degree in Interior Architecture. “I dug out the typewriter from the back of a cupboard at my partner’s parent’s house in Sicily, the Lettera 22 was used by the great Italian […]
Social conscious is something us designers often consider. While our friends are doctors or teachers slowly saving the world day by day, we (or at least I do) jump at the opportunity to use design for the greater good – seems like our friends over at Symphonic Pixels have a similar approach. They are an independent design studio with a passion for creating work that effects innovative changes in the world by focusing on meaningful, […]
We couldn’t have put it better than in the words of a Special Group we’d like to introduce you to who, “don’t do anything by halves… We aim to make as big an impact on the market on behalf of our clients as is humanly possible. We create content that gets lots of attention and works exponentially harder than the media spend alone. No-one has money to waste, so we make everything count. By weaving intuitive and […]
Going the extra mile is a philosophy we should all aspire to, unfortunately that conflicting notion of there not being enough hours in the day sometimes gets in the way acting as a convenient excuse. Trial and Error appear to have found their way through this maze of contradictions. Not only are they designers but they are also keen observers and documenters, good but not good enough, add to that mix the odd workshops here and there and you have the complete package. […]