Final­ists Online

September 2nd, 2010

Best Awards final­ists are locked, loaded and ready to view over at the Best Awards web­site. The qual­ity of work is always out­stand­ing, and this year is no excep­tion. To piqué your curi­os­ity, here’s one final­ist in the spa­tial cat­egory of Offices and Work­place Envir­on­ments. To be com­pletely self-serving, this office for The Research Agency by archi­tect Jose Guti­er­rez also hap­pens to be in our next issue, which is sched­uled to arrive on shelves any minute now. Keep an eye out…

This year the awards are being held at Sky­city on 1 Octo­ber. The new trophy’s are being made and a new Best web­site will go live on 2 Octo­ber. You can also get some updates and pre­views via @bestawards.

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The Last Six

September 2nd, 2010

Vot­ing time is upon us. The inter­me­di­ary judges of the ‘I Wrapped it My Way’ pro­mo­tion have whittled their way through 90-odd entries — and almost all, it has to be said, were of an exem­plary stand­ard — and settled upon six grand finalists.

These six, which you can see above and below, are now wait­ing online for your seal of approval. Go to iwrappeditmyway.co.nz today and tick the box of the one you like most. The win­ning design will be wrapped (lit­er­ally) and unveiled at a spe­cial event at the new MINI Gar­age in Pon­sonby. The win­ning designer will then drive around in said auto­mobile for four months (or longer if they decide to go all Came a Hot Fri­day on it and dis­ap­pear to Inver­car­gill). Last but not least, thanks to all the kind spon­sors who helped us out with this pro­mo­tion: MINI, The Pond, BJ Ball, Geon and BKA Inter­act­ive, whose web­site design for this pro­ject was, in itself, a work of art. Read More »

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Optim­ism

August 27th, 2010

Plan­ning a trip to Oz soon? Why not time it to coin­cide with the Ico­grada– and AGDA– hos­ted ‘Optim­ism: Ico­grada Design Week Brisbane’.

Optim­ism, as the short-form goes, is an inter­na­tional design con­fer­ence, the 10th AGDA National Bien­nial Awards, and site of exhib­i­tions, design trade fair, work­shops and other ‘spe­cial events’.

Vis­it­ing speak­ers include Steven Heller, whose list of achieve­ments is too long to list here, Blair Enns, author of The Win Without Pitch­ing Mani­festo, Jason Fan and a host of oth­ers (includ­ing Cameron Bruhn, man­aging editor of Archi­tec­ture Media, par­ent com­pany of AGM Pub­lish­ing, which in turn pub­lishes ProDesign).

Early-bird ticket sales end on 29 August.

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More Red Dots

August 27th, 2010

While we’re on the sub­ject of Red Dots, this one seems to have slipped (mostly) under the radar.


Cal­vert Plastics, a Lower Hutt-based com­pany, recently picked up a Red Dot Award for Code, an acous­tic tile with, as the judges say, “a three-dimensional form [that] gives this acous­tic tile a fas­cin­at­ing appearance”

We have a run down on this new product in the next issue of ProDesign, which will be out in the next few days. Until them well done to the deisgn­ers, Jonathan Mount­ford and Nata­sha Perkins.

— Michael Bar­rett

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Alt Wins a Mil­lion Awards

August 26th, 2010

Or maybe it was seven… but seven may as well be a mil­lion if you’re count­ing red dots in front of your eyes.

In 2009 Alt Group took home four Red Dot awards and then later went on to win the supreme Red Dot Grand Prix for com­mu­nic­a­tion design. This year it has taken home seven Red Dot Awards, which is a good res­ult in anyone’s book, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing there were 6,369 entries from 44 countries.

Read More »

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Blog Roll to Hit London

August 26th, 2010

Wel­ling­ton designer Josh Barr has work chosen for Anti Design Fest­ival in London.


Barr’s work, Blog Roll, is a sculp­tural piece that chal­lenges the notion of graphic design as two-dimensional and ques­tions the value of digital com­mu­nic­a­tion or, as he puts it, “In essence, the work pro­vokes debate about the value of what pub­lish­ing is.” Read More »

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Week­end Her­ald Revamp

August 14th, 2010

The Sat­urday morn­ing stumble back from your let­ter­box may have today been a little more inter­est­ing. The Week­end Her­ald has been given a shake-up cour­tesy Aus­tralian print design spe­cial­ists De Luxe & Asso­ci­ates. De Luxe did a nice job improv­ing the Sunday News a while back, and the firm has quite a port­fo­lio of top shelf cli­ents on its web­site.

The good news, for fans of New Zea­l­and designed typefaces, is that Kris Sowersby has con­trib­uted two of his fonts to the redesign: Founders Grotesk and Tiem­pos Head­line. There’s a nice run­down on the design of Founders on the Klim Type Foundry web­site. As far as we know, this is the first time a New Zealand-designed typeface has been used for a New Zea­l­and news­pa­per… let us know if you know otherwise.

Another Week­end Her­ald font Pub­lico Text, was designed by Chris­tian Schwartz, fam­ous in type circles for his work on the Guard­ian redesign. Schar­wtz, who spoke in New Zea­l­and about the Guard­ian type design pro­ject at Typeshed11 last year, has an inter­est­ing back story about Publico’s design here.

Feed­back please. What are your thoughts on the Week­end Herald’s new look?

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Live Fast, Die Trying

August 11th, 2010

Per­haps unfairly, pro­mo­tional mater­ial for bank­ing insti­tu­tions doesn’t often register highly on this site. But then again, the pro­mo­tional mater­ial for bank­ing insti­tu­tions isn’t gen­er­ally as typo­graph­ic­ally inter­est­ing as this item pro­duced for an Aus­tralian entity called uBank.

Don’t des­pair, there’s a Kiwi con­nec­tion: the multi-talented designer, col­our­ist and image retoucher Geoff Fran­cis was inolved, as was Ned Wen­lock from Hov­er­lion in Wel­ling­ton. They worked on this pro­ject with Aus­tralian cre­at­ive agency Three Drunk Mon­keys.

(Addi­tional cred­its: exec­ut­ive cre­at­ive dir­ector: Justin Drape / Scott Now­ell; cre­at­ive dir­ector: Noah Regan; art dir­ector: Becky Alp­er­stein; copy­writer: Henry Kem­ber; broad­cast pro­du­cer: Helen Willis.)

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World Class Architecture

August 6th, 2010

Over at Selector, Houses NZ editor Peta Nich­ols has a wrap of the five New Zea­l­and build­ings short­l­is­ted for the 2010 World Archi­tec­ture Fest­ival, of which ProDesign’s sib­ling pub­lic­a­tion Archi­tec­ture NZ is a media part­ner. The short­l­is­ted build­ings’ archi­tects (such as Stevens Lawson, the design­ers of the house above) will now present their build­ings at the World Archi­tec­ture Fest­ival, held in Bar­celona in November.

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Ima­gine That!

August 6th, 2010

School Journal and Mas­sey mark twelve years of illus­trator tal­ent: Ima­gine That! Stephen Olsen reports back from the open­ing night of the exhibition.

Brad Gor­jas. Pro­fessor Brane­wave. Cap­tain Crinkle. Two ali­ens called Flurb and Blurf and a robot named Squeak…

While not phys­ic­ally present these char­ac­ters from a sci-fi play soon to appear in the pages of the School Journal were undoubtedly in star­ring roles at the open­ing of the Ima­gine That! exhib­i­tion in Wel­ling­ton this week which runs until Sunday 15 August.

Read More »

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