Frost* Design Blog

July 22nd, 2010 7:26 PM

Iron Designer

Frost has been invited to take part in Iron Designer, a design-based battle put on as part of Sydney Design 10 – a celebrated Sydney institution showcasing local and international design with a diverse program running over 16 days, organised by Melbourne based creative team, Studio Binocular.

Inspired by their Japanese cooking counterparts, the challengers work individually or in teams of 2-3 in a pressure cooker style design-off. In response to the Festival’s theme – Tell us a story – teams are given 20 minutes to impress the judges with their innovative use of the battle’s key ingredients.

The aim of the game is to present a live and entertaining exploration of the creative process – showcasing the way designers think and how they transfer their thoughts into something visual. Mediated by a flamboyant host, in conjunction with a panel of industry based judges, Iron Designer sees participants working individually or in studio-based teams of 2-3. Participants are given three words which become the battle’s ‘key ingredients’.

Designers have access to a range of materials and are given 20 minutes to  “tell us a story” visually. The night is run in two rounds with four teams competing per round. The two heat winners and carry-over champions then play off for the Iron Designer crown.

This fast-paced contest is run in two rounds, with the winner of each going into a championship playoff, where the ultimate victor will be crowned Iron Designer 2010 – basking in the glory and adulation of the crowd.

The whole studio will be there to revel in the glory of being crowned Sydney’s Iron Designer champions!

July 20th, 2010 2:35 PM

The Essential Ingredient

The in-house design studio we’ve set up for Woolworths department store in South Africa has begun rolling it’s first new packs out onto shelf, the initial stage of what will be a mammoth packaging redesign program, eventually encompassing more than 5000 items.

Essentials is Woolworth’s entry price point range of house, basic supermarket items, with all of the quality you’d expect from the brand, but a price tag that will make customers smile. It has also been the first to receive the Frost* treatment. Our packaging redesign strategy is not only about contemporisation, but ensuring all own ranges communicate the quality which defines Woolworths’ very essence, by embedding good, thoughtful design into the brand through packaging.

Simple, bold typography and the use of elements like photography and graphic shapes, aim to speak to the consumer in an engaging, intelligent way. Colour is also used in category leading ways, to differentiate variants within the lines.

July 12th, 2010 12:42 PM

Collec+ors

Adelaide based furniture designer Khai Liew is collaborating with six pre-eminent Australian designers as part of the Collec+ors exhibition.

The exhibition celebrates a reunion of a group of Australian creative talents, brought together by their participation in ‘Collect: the international art fair for contemporary objects’, firstly at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and now at the Saatchi Gallery.

Collec+ors will showcase collaborative new works by Khai Liew and Kirsten Coelho, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, Bruce Nuske, Prue Venables (ceramics), Julie Blyfield (metal) and Jessica Loughlin (glass).

Back in 2004 Frost designed the identity for Collect and has since been working with Khai Liew, creating the furniture designer’s identity, website and now exhibition identity.

Collec+ors opens in Adelaide on Thursday 29 July coinciding with the 2010 South Australian Living Artists (SALA) Festival. The exhibition continues until 29 August, 11am-4pm daily.

For more news and updates visit Khai Liew’s facebook page.

July 08th, 2010 5:27 PM

Come Together

Global property developers Frasers are set to revitalise the old Carlton brewery site in Sydney and create a vibrant new gateway to the CBD. Frost* have come on board to develop the brand strategy and will be involved in every aspect of the development’s ongoing communications.

Central Park’s vision is to become a new urban village within an existing city of villages that incorporates New York style apartments, to create a thriving creative urban community. Pritzker prize winning architecture luminaries from all around the world, including Foster + Partners (UK) and Ateliers Jean Nouvel (France), have been commissioned to create an internationally significant development.

We focussed on the idea of the global village – a collective of a diverse people, joining to create a community. From this came the creative idea of ‘coming together’, which underpins all communications. The identity highlights each letter in Central Park with a different colour, representing the convergence of different people and elements to form a whole. The new identity can be seen on the site hoarding and the new display suite.

Stay tuned for more from us on this project! In the meantime check out the website we designed.

June 10th, 2010 5:22 PM

Manfredi refreshments

Stefano Manfredi  is one of Australia’s most celebrated chefs , with a string of iconic restaurants to his name (Bel Mondo, Restaurant Manfredi and now Bells at Killcare), as well four cookbooks and a weekly produce column in the Sydney Morning Herald. Ten years ago,  Manfredi  and business partner Julie Manfredi Hughes  invited Frost* to design the identity for  the Di Manfredi line of café-only coffee blends, Espresso di Manfredi by Piazza D’Oro, which has  been instrumental in the establishment of a vibrant coffee culture in Australia. Now, for their 10th anniversary celebrations, Frost* has again been commissioned, this time to create a new, refreshed identity and artwork for the brand’s bespoke Tazzalta Mug and the Universal Saucer, created by renowned ceramic artist, Rod Bamford.

A bold, typographic treatment replaces the original photographic identity, bringing a refreshing modernity to the brand look and feel. The art has been applied to the special Espresso di Manfredi by Piazza D’Oro Artist Anniversary Collection of china and will be used across a new packaging theme for the product, employed by our studio on café windbreaks, umbrellas, coffee bags, take-away cups, mugs and sugar sticks. The new look was unveiled at a recent media event in Sydney and will soon be seen serving the brew at a café in your neck of the woods.

May 05th, 2010 6:01 PM

Surf the friendly skies

We were thrilled to win a competitive pitch for the refreshing of Sydney Airport’s airline marketing collateral and even more fired up about putting our “Get on Board” concept into action. Our first major project was the design of a corporate brochure to build new and existing relationships with airlines, traditionally very dry pieces of corporate literature focusing on airport infrastructure.

But Sydney, as a hub, offers something most other cities in the world can’t – our unique outdoor lifestyle. So for us, this brochure needed to use the city itself as a selling tool for the airport. We wanted to realise the idea of the true Sydney visually and reflect our famously cosmopolitan, confident and easy-going personality in the design philosophy, engaging the reader with an exciting sense of vibrancy.

A surfboard is an image which neatly sums up everything that’s great about the Sydney lifestyle and as a visual device on the cover, dovetails cleverly with our “Get on Board” theme. Turn the board upside down and the upturned fin echoes the tailfin of an aircraft, making a strong visual statement about the lifestyle story to be revealed inside.

With 90,000 passengers a day, Sydney Airport is the world’s 33rd busiest, as well as its oldest international gateway, just some of the many awe inspiring statistics we’ve used in an editorial style to open the document, pulling the reader in with an initial ‘big bang’. Clever copywriting and bold typography in various layers, the use of pull quotes and extended captions, makes these facts heroic – anything but the data-heavy annual report style presentation of convention. Vibrant colour, imagery and type is employed throughout the brochure, which includes features on the airport’s physical location, business traveller and tourism markets, an historical timeline and a network map created with rainbow-hued bars, to lighten the dense information with an evocative, unmistakably Sydney feel.

Rounding off the piece is a curated photo essay designed to encapsulate the very essence of Sydney, as seen through the eyes of some of the city’s most talented photographers. We called for submissions and received over 1000 entries, which were narrowed down to a selection that powerfully showcases the many facets of Sydney and its enviable way of life. Accompanied by narrative from the artists detailing why their selected shot sums up Sydney for them, this folio of photography becomes postcards of Sydney, encouraging recipients to keep-sake the brochure.

April 15th, 2010 5:52 PM

Confidence building

Australand, one of Australia’s leading property developers, wanted a cost effective annual report appropriate for a group emerging from the effects of the GFC. At the same time, they wanted to convey the resilience of a business model which resulted in the Group being well-positioned for 2010 and beyond. Our response was a smartly designed suite of two-colour publications which employ our signature bold use of typography, taking an editorial approach with headlines that make the text more accessible. Throughout the document, photographs of buildings and an architectural skyline device reflect the very nature of Australand’s business and a streamlined grid harks to the topography of land.

April 09th, 2010 3:21 PM

Pooh-pooh!

Dropped the kids off at the pool this morning…

April 08th, 2010 6:10 PM

Bright Prospectus

We recently won a pitch to develop a visual identity for the University of New South Wales’s Faculty of the Built Environment (BE). This involved the development of a new visual language for the faculty, including the selection of typefaces and colour palettes, direction on photography style and formatting guidelines.

The first application of the new visual guidelines was in our design of their undergrad program, aimed at prospective students. The brochure design reflects the University’s motto “Of hand and mind” – referring to the combination of practical and academic skills on offer. The background uses a silver gradient to give the brochure a sense of gravitas, while bright accents of neon colour are used to reflect creativity and appeal to a youthful audience. The prospectus contains lots of facts and figures detailing the available courses, so we made them accessible and appealing by using bold typography contained within a simple grid. This has given the faculty a strong visual presence within the university and helped to strikingly communicate its offering to potential undergraduates worldwide.

April 07th, 2010 4:13 PM

Bloody L!

What the L’s wrong with Sydney? Is there an L shortage?