Blog Roll to Hit London

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 »

Posted in Graphic Design, Typography | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Week­end Her­ald Revamp

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?

Posted in Graphic Design, Type Design | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Live Fast, Die Trying

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.)

Posted in Graphic Design, Typography | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

World Class Architecture

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!

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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Resene Total Col­our Awards

Paul Leuschke of Leuschke Kahn Archi­tects last night picked up the first ever ‘Resene Total Col­our Mas­ter – Night­in­gale Award’ for his design work for Grant Thornton Account­ants, Auck­land. ProDesign ran a story on this pro­ject (Account­ing 4 Taste) in issue 100, and now online, below. Words: Anthony Coates. Pho­tos: Kal­lan MacLeod. You can find a full list of award win­ners here.


Account­ant’ and ‘archi­tect’ may be close together on an alpha­bet­ical list of careers in your school guid­ance counsellor’s office, but in the reduc­tion­ist world of small-minded ste­reo­typ­ing where I spend most of my time, they couldn’t be any fur­ther apart. Read More »

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Holo­graphic Archi­tec­tural Imagery

Fans of new tech­no­lo­gies, par­tic­u­larly those rel­ev­ant to the archi­tec­tural and design indus­tries might find this video (from Core77) on holo­graphic imagery inter­est­ing. Any­one out there doing any­thing holo­graphic in New Zea­l­and? Feel free to drop us a line.

Holo­graphic Archi­tec­tural Ima­ging by Zebra from Core77 on Vimeo.

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Show­ing Face

The New Zea­l­and Première of Typeface, by Justine Nagan, in Wel­ling­ton on 10 August.

One for type afi­cionadoes — here’s the blurb:

In rural Wis­con­sin, a lone employee waits in a cav­ernous old museum for vis­it­ors to come. A few indi­vidu­als straggle in every few days and then, come Fri­day, the museum fills with life. Machines hum, presses print, artists buzz about. One week­end each month, the quiet of Two Rivers is inter­rup­ted as car­loads of artis­ans drive in from across the Mid­w­est. The place comes alive as print­mak­ing work­shops led by, and filled with, some of the nation’s top design tal­ent des­cend on the sleepy enclave.

In a time when people can carry com­puters in their pock­ets and watch TV while walk­ing down the street, Typeface dares to explore the twi­light of an ana­log craft that is freshly inspir­ing artists in a digital age. The Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, WI per­son­i­fies cul­tural pre­ser­va­tion, rural re-birth and the lin­eage of Amer­ican graphic design. At Hamilton, inter­na­tional artis­ans meet retired crafts­men and together nav­ig­ate the con­ver­gence of mod­ern design and tra­di­tional tech­nique. But the Museum’s days may be numbered. What is the respons­ib­il­ity of artists and his­tor­i­ans to pre­serve a dying craft? How can rural towns sur­vive in a shift­ing indus­trial mar­ket­place where big-box retail­ers are king?

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Gal­lery Watch

Auckland-based (or those from fur­ther afield with vehicu­lar access) fans of col­lect­ive art endeav­ours should head to The Digital Dark­room on Domin­ion Road as of tomor­row (29 July) to take in a con­tem­por­ary art exhib­i­tion fea­tur­ing pho­to­graphy, art prints, graphic design and nee­dle­work (yes, the craft revival con­tin­ues unabated). If the flyer is any­thing to go by — and yes, I am guilty of star­ing deep into the depths of pro­mo­tional mater­ial in an attempt to make an oracle-like judge­ment call based mostly on rather small thumb­nail images — this show is shap­ing up to be pretty interesting.

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Wrap and Roll

Plenty of designs for the ProDesign (and friend’s) iwrap­ped­it­my­way com­pet­i­tion are rolling in. For your view­ing pleas­ure, here’s a gal­lery of some of the latest entries.

For those that haven’t entered yet, please do. It’s not hard work; it’s fun! And if you win you could be driv­ing around in your own cus­tom­ised Mini for four months.

Entries close 12 August.

Posted in Graphic Design | 2 Comments