I’m thrilled to bring you the third entry in the High Five series – an absolutely bumper sized edition featuring two of Australia’s very best illustration and design talents, Sonny Day & Biddy Maroney aka. We Buy Your Kids.

Sonny and Biddy combined their formidable talents in 2006, and began creating screen-printed tour posters for Popfrenzy Records. Since then their client list has exploded, they’ve exhibited everywhere, and they’ve applied their unique aesthetic to record covers, shop fit-outs, gallery walls, merchandise, websites, music videos and just about any other medium you can think of. Represented by prestigious Australian illustration agents Jacky Winter, WBYK continue to produce dozens of gig posters each year in between work for clients as diverse as Tourism Victoria, Mecca Espresso and XXXX Breweries.

There’s something truly special about their work. It’s rich, symbolic and masterfully created. It often contains elements of 70′s psychedelia, Hammer Horror aesthetics, vintage comics and 80′s skate punk style – and yet it still feels completely fresh and new. There’s just something innately likable about it, and whether that’s due to the humor they often inject into their illustrations or the obvious passion they have for the work shining through, WBYK continue to surprise and delight with every new creation.

One of the motivating forces behind starting this series of articles was to examine just how people can take a myriad of visual influences, and then reinterpret them into something entirely new and unique. You can definitely see some serious design alchemy occur where Sonny and Biddy’s personal tastes and individual design histories collide as WBYK.

I’ve tried to showcase as many different project types and disciplines in my selections here, but it’s really just the tip of the iceberg. WBYK’s portfolio is simply one of the best this country has to offer, and it’s not hard to get lost in all all the beauty and craziness they’ve produced over the past 5 years.

Dungog Film Festival
2009 Identity & Poster

I can’t quite put my finger on exactly what it is that I love about this poster so much. It could be the leather-like patchwork of textures on the cow. It could be the colours and the vibrant sunset beaming out from behind the township of Dungog. Or it could be the sheer scale of the thing, with the cow literally tall enough to have its head in the clouds. Whatever it is, I just find this to be one of my favourite pieces of Australian design produced in the last few years.

It’s an exceptionally beautiful poster. The amount of detail and craftsmanship invested into the artwork is quite staggering, from the cow, to the sky, to details in the city and landscape, right down to a scale version of the old Dungog cinema in the middle. There is attention paid to every aspect of the image, and in my mind it truly captures the atmosphere of a rural Australian sunset – in an wonderfully surreal way.

The work that WBYK produced for the festival extends beyond the poster art and includes the stunning ornate typography which makes up the festival’s 2009 identity (designed to be cow-like in appearance), as well as a variety of secondary materials which were co-produced by Frost in Sydney.

Paul Dempsey
Everything Is True

Drawing inspiration from classic Penguin science fiction paperbacks and the work of the great Bob Pepper, WBYK created a stunning piece of design with a palpable sense of mystery and ambiance for Paul Dempsey’s solo album.

“The great thing was Sonny went into the first meeting with Paul and he explained what the album is all about and had some references of his own – they came to the idea that the sci-fi covers were an exact an appropriate reference. The album is all about ideas of fusion of man and machine – its got some pretty layered references in there. And Paul not only knew of the artists Sonny mentioned to him but also introduced us to some more we didn’t know. So its not like we just slapped this aesthetic on top, its entirely appropriate and we got to make graphics pertaining directly to lyrics. It was a perfect fit.”

This cover is a great example of how WBYK are able to create completely mesmerizing work, and to tell such a complete story, using just a few elements. Their expert use of texture serves to create tone rather than “artificial vintage”, and the way that the illustration and design is carried across the album art, singles, merchandise and music video is just amazing

For those playing at home – the typeface is H&FJ’s Verlag ”the affable modernist”.

If this isn’t at least nominated for a 2010 Best Artwork Aria, I’ll be stunned.

The Everything Is True artwork was brought to life in the music video ‘Bats’, which was animated by the powerhouse at Mighty Nice under the direction of Darren Price.

“There was a team working on that there, and it was a new experience for us – we are used to building the clip from the opening second to the last, where as they built that from a skeleton frame upwards. Adding as much special-sauce skin as they could in the short time available. We had storyboarded and illustrated every scene, but they took our layered illustrations and deconstructed them, then rebuilt them in 3D, put some pretty bullshit camera moves on and even animated a lot of the textures. That was pretty cool for us to see them do that.”

Nelson Beer

I think that Beer branding and design is generally pretty good in this country. Most breweries (particularly the small to medium variety) seem to truly value the importance of design and illustration and often aim to cultivate and support local creative art. Discerning drinkers generally expect quality (if not innovation) and so to do something truly memorable, original and just plain awesome with a beer brand presents an interesting challenge.

WBYK and Nelson knocked it out of the park with this label, with what is essentially some type of interstellar monkey demi-god, with six arms, cowboy boots, a massive chest-piece tatoo and a floating top hat. It’s simply one of the most flat-out excellent beer labels that I’ve ever seen, and I have to say I’ve seen a few.

It’s primitive and modern at the same time. It somehow evokes both Hannah Barbera cartoons and Indian deities. It’s just so playful and unusual that you can’t help but be drawn to it.

The execution of the whole thing makes it even more special, with the illustration screen-printed in white straight onto the bottle, which is topped off with a signature white cap. There’s a lovely hand-crafted feel to the design and the bottle, and yet it still evokes a premium quality. Really excellent stuff.

Purple Sneakers continues to be one of Sydney’s most popular club nights, outlasting dozens of nights large and small that have been promoted over the last 5 years. This is no mean feat considering how many trends have come and gone in those short years, and how quickly the demographics of these things shift and change.

Part of the success of this night must be credited to WBYK’s identity and iconic poster designs. While many club nights don’t seem to put much care or consideration into their posters, WBYK have produced an ongoing series of unique and well-branded posters, which find a middle ground between 50′s cartoon-modern style and urban gig poster aesthetics.

Last year they gave the franchise a bit of a facelift too, revising the identity from a grunged-up Clarendon to a bespoke Baby Teeth inspired logo.

The approach to poster artwork has been revised too, with a more streamlined template and design that is closer to the current WBYK aesthetic.

Clementine by Megan Washington

I’m not going to say too much about this particular piece – it’s simply the art of WBYK brought to life and it’s brilliant.

“Clementine was a job we started intending Biddy to animate a whole video in After Effects herself. Sonny story-boarded the whole thing to be super simple with minimal movement. The idea was most of the action could be drawn in frames in Photoshop. So Sonny drew the poses of the panther running etc and we illustrated them and just looped the frames. About 20 seconds into the clip we realised we just didn’t have to time to draw and animate it all. So we roped in our dear friend Adnan Lalani (who Biddy had worked with at Mathematics and has animated loads of her / our stuff before. He graciously took it on and finished the whole thing. He added some subtle camera moves and elements that added a lot without compromising the idea it should look like an animated gif.”

Sonny Day’s High Five—

Aqua Teen Hunger Force

I love this show, I love the characters, I love the fact that there is a TV show about a milkshake, meatball and a man made of french fries living in a tract home in New Jersey with their neighbour Carl who usually dies or gets horribly maimed in every episode.

Does that make me a sicko?

James Jarvis

I used to be a big fan of Jarvis’s illustrations in The Face.

I kinda forgot about him until I saw his stuff again in Relax magazine from Japan.

I really loved these really loose B/W drawings he would have in the back of the mag.

Definitely a big influence.

Steak Mountain

I’m trying to remember where we came across Steak, I remember seeing covers for a band called Combat Wounded Veteran of which Steak was a member.
It was awesome stuff, but I think what really blew me away was a cover for a band called The Draft.

After that we both became regular visitors to his site and his stuff just got better and better.

Alien Workshop

Alien Workshop has been one of my favorite skateboard companies.

They have always had an amazing aesthetic based around aliens (of course ), conspiracy theories and generally amazing artwork. I never used to ride their boards because I didn’t want to ruin the graphics.

The two artists I’ve responded to most over the years are Neil Blender ( one of AWS founders ) and Don Pendelton. Neil did a lot of the earlier graphics like the comic strip below while Don was responsible for the more Geometric/Symetrical graphics that drove AWS graphics trough the late 90′s early 00′s.

Ed Templeton
Toy Machine

Along with the Graphics of Alien Workshop the other influence I had that showed me that there was more to drawing than just making comics was Ed templeton and his company Toy Machine.

I first discovered Ed in an issue of Transworld Skateboarding in 1994. Along side the interview and the photos were all of these amazing illustrations, little characters and slogans. Ed is very vocal about what he beilives in and this showed in these illustrations as much as the words in the interview.

Long story short Ed is the bomb, he more than any thing else showed what was really possible and got me to start looking at things in different ways. An amazing photographer as well, Ed is a very successful fine artist.

Biddy Maroney’s High Five—

Eightball
Daniel Clowes

I grew up in a house surrounded by comic books and a lot of other rad things – my Dad’s collected comics and movie posters since he was a boy, and I was lucky enough to be surrounded by all this amazing stuff growing up.

Eightball was the first comic book that I followed myself, rather than having the interest passed down to me, and collected from the time I left home in 1993… till the other day when I picked up the last Dan Clowes masterpiece – “Wilson”. I even managed to lose most of my collection in a pub once… but re-bought many of the issues on Ebay. It’s still my favourite comic book.

I think all the aspects I love from my Dad’s stuff (Wally Wood / EC comics / Dick Tracy / The Spirit) is there – the amazing draftsmanship, great big black shadows, that 1950s American aesthetic. Men in hats. But it has a dry sad humour to the storytelling that I love just as much as the imagery. And a lot of misguided ’90s teenage idiots – which I guess I was at the time too.

It started out a little whacky – with “A Velvet Glove Cast in Iron” and a bunch of weirdo one-pager gags. I love love love how he’s gotten older and matured through the series. His later longer pieces are just so right to me. “Wilson” is so old and grizzled. He’s not writing about douche-bag teenagers now – its douche-bags approaching a mid-life crisis. Sometimes I worry Sonny and I will turn into the creepy supermarket satanists from “Ghost World”. I love his subtle, masterful style. Am I gushing? Dan Clowes is rad.

Sonic Youth – Goo
Raymond Pettibon

This is another teenage throw-back. More specifically throwing back to 1990 when this came out and blew my tiny, 15-year-old, small-town mind. It’s such an iconic album cover there’s not much point saying more stuff about it – but it just makes me think of being a smitten teenager and redrawing it on everything with Artline pens and texta.

Also, before internet-amazingness-availability-unto-me, I was walking through that exhibition they had at the MCA (in 2001?) and they had a whole room Lee Ranaldo filled with Sonic Youth paraphenalia. I looked up and there was a Dinosaur Jr. flyer using the photo the Goo cover is based on. I thought it was some super cool rockstars from the 50s! Then another 3 or so years passed and I watched a documentary on Myra Hindley – and there it was again! It was actually from the late ’60s and it’s her sister being driven off to give evidence against her, so much more grave than I had thought from craning my neck up at it in the MCA.

It took me a few years to get to squeeze into a world with internets and money to buy art books to see more of Raymond Pettibon’s work. I’m sure I’ve seen an interview of him working in his studio on the internet somewhere, recklessly stepping on messes of amazing artwork, spilt ink dribbling off the table kinda thing…. I love that he doesn’t seem precious about anything, but still seems very intense. It’s all so loose, but totally spot-on. The drawings look like they are done quite hastily, but his skills are out of control. The text always leads you in for something extra as well. It was all whirlwind, heat and flash! (Sorry, that was lame.)

Oh, and regardless of what Sonny might try and convince you, the best song on Goo is “Mote“.

(According to Sonny it’s “Titanium Expose” – played here over some footage of Ed Templeton skating.)

Crime Suspense Stories
EC Comics
Russ Cochran

This one just goes back again to all those comics in the house, when I was a kid. This was always my favorite cover. (Though Johnny Craig was never really my favorite EC comic artist – that was Jack Kamen – he drew the best sexy ladies.)

There was a re-issue of the entire EC library by Russ Cochrane, which must have spanned the mid-late eighties. Every few monts a new volume would turn up at the house. They are oversized, and just reprint the beautiful black inkwork; there’s no colour except for the covers. And I think the image below (axe-man with disempodied head) is a hell of a cover. Her eyes rolling back in her skull is just the icing on the cake of hammmmmm.

These comics are just truly beautiful to me. It taps into that morbid aesthetic I guess I’ve inherited from the cool stuff around when I was kid. I call it “Camp-Goth”. I would pore over all the Twisted / Crime / Suspenstories, the horror / mystery comics. I was never really into the Science Fiction numbers. Its all a bit gross and scary and stupid and hammed up and funny. And awesome.

Selected Film Posters:
Barry Lyndon – Richard Amsel
Rosemary’s Baby – Bemis Balkind

I’ve combined these two things into one thing for a few reasons:

1. Again they represent the stuff in my house when I grew up and the appreciation / collection of / obsession with movie posters my Dad’s alway had.

2. I don’t really know that much about either of them. Heath told me who both of the designers are, and they’re amazing, but are not really part of my make-up. Just the posters are.

3. I reckon I Google one or the other of these about once a fortnight, just to have a look at ‘em.

4. The Webuyyourkids logo font and the Barry Lyndon poster walk into a bar. WBYK logo looks up with big watery eyes and asks “Are you my Daddy? Barry Lyndon poster slaps it on the back of the heads and orders an Old Fashioned.

5. How good is Rosemary’s Baby?!?!

Chris Ofili

I had a hard time trying to pick number 5, between Shary Boyle and Chris Ofili. (So I just copped out and named both!)

Chris Ofili won out for his use of animal poo, and because I’ve known about him longer.
I think I have only ever seen his work in the flesh (and poo) at a Biennale at the good old MCA agin. Thanks MCA! (Now I think about it the only real life Raymond Pettibon I’ve seen was in there too.)

I just think these are beautiful again – all the massive colour and those Blaxploitation Psych-Out pieces are huge and jam-packed with shiny glorious body-parts. I found it hard to walk away from them cos you really can just stand there and soak it up for ages. I really loved his Afro-Muse profile portraits of couples too – I think they are ink or watercolour on paper. I’m a big fan of the profile portrait, and his take on it is one one of my favourites.

*****

I’d like to extend a massive, warm thank you to Sonny & Biddy for participating in this. Truly some of the nicest, most talent folks I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. As always, I can’t wait to see what they produce next.

I’d also like to thank you for reading. If you’ve enjoyed the article please tell your friends about it.

High Five will be back soon, but in the meantime you can check out some of the previous entries:

Magnus Voll Mathiassen
Wallzo

*(sorry trees)
Vince Frost

A chronicle of Frost’s journey from London to Sydney, and from Pentagram associate to international design icon. This is a fantastic book with the right balance of eye-candy and information, exploring case studies spanning from the mid 90′s to the present day. Simply one of the best and most inspiring designers working today.

Not sure what stock used was, but it feels incredible and is unlike any other book I’ve held. I can’t recall any other book typeset in Franklin Gothic Bold either, but it works.

Love the black on fluoro-orange cover too.

Cover Art By: New Music Graphics
Adrian Shaughnessy

One of my favourite books. Cover Art By is an indispensable guide to some of the best in contemporary music design, and features the likes of Julian House, Kim Hiorthoy, Rune Mortensen, Steve Byram, Jeff Jank and Grandpeople.

It’s great to just flick through and enjoy the hundred of images, but there’s actually some quite in-depth interviews with the artists and designers profiled, as well as detailed information on all the images.

Typeset in Lineto’s Simple— which is a personal favourite.

Made You Look / Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far
Stefan Sagmeister

If you don’t own both of these books, stop reading and purchase them immediately.

Sagmeister’s two books compliment each other nicely, and not just because they are identical in size. Made You Look doccuments Sagmeister’s life (literally from day one) and professional development, and provides one of the most honest & candid accounts of the design business you’ll ever read. Things I Have Learned… is more of a design exercise than an autobiography, but it still essentially picks up where Made You Look left off, and examines where Sagmeister’s journey has taken him and where it might go next. Very inspiring.

Both books are also incredibly rich in content and detail too, with visual gags and little anecdotes hidden throughout.

Vaughan Oliver: Visceral Pleasures
Rick Poynor

The amazing, inimitable Vaughan Oliver. Poynor’s book chronicles almost all of Oliver’s career, and provides plenty of images and insight into his work with 4AD. This is one of my most read and beloved design books.

display copy only, a book of intro work
Intro

This is extremely hard to get hold of, but it’s well worth hunting down, particularly if you’re as huge a fan of Julian House & Mat Cook as I am.

There’s a great forward by Intro founder Adrian Shaughnessy, followed by another great forward by John O’Reilly, but beyond that there are very few words. This is no bad thing when you’re treated to the beyond-brilliant work the studio has done for Stereolab, Broadcast, Primal Scream, and Depeche Mode to name just a few.

Plastered. The Poster Art of Australian Popular Music
Murray Walding / Nick Vukovic

Like Symbols of Australia this book is the result of a labour of love, and it too is a must have for any lovers of Australian design. It features an abundance of music related poster art collected from the 1950′s to the present day, and is an absolute feast for the eyes.

There’s plenty of information about each period, interviews with selected designers and artists, and almost all the posters are annotated.

Perfection.

Perverse Optimist
Tibor Kalman / Peter Hall

This book will make you a better designer and a better human being.

Mmm Skyscraper I Love You
John Warwicker & Karl Hyde

A non-musical collaboration between one of my favourite studios Tomato and one of my favourite bands Underworld. This book is essentially a typographic map of New York, taking in the architecture, culture and movement of the city and translating it into designs built from abstract illustrations and fonts.

It’s part concrete poetry and part experimental sketchbook. A dark, dense and hugely compelling exploration of the city that never sleeps.

I haven’t been able to get my hands on a copy yet, by John Warwicker’s new book The Floating World looks incredible too.

Non Format Love Song
Non Format

Who doesn’t love Non Format? Their work is big, bold and incredibly sexy. It’s what the future should look like. The sheer volume of incredible images makes you forget that it’s pretty light on written content. It contains quite a few images that are only available in this book too, including a selection of fantastic typographic experiments.

Pure, unadulterated, and delicious eye candy.

The End Of Print
David Carson / Lewis Blackwell

Carson is probably the most contested and debated designer of all time. Few designers inspire such extreme positions of love and hate within the industry. Whichever side of the fence you sit on, there’s no denying his influence, particularly during the 90′s where his gritty, digital, rule-breaking designs changed everything.

There are a number of books by and about Carson, but this is my favourite. It contains mini essays on Carson by luminaries such as Tibor Kalman and Douglas Coupland, and covers some of his best work, including the groundbreaking designs for Ray Gun Magazine

Town Of Mirrors
Robert Pollard

While I don’t listen to Guided By Voices much these days, they provided much of the soundtrack to my high school years. Singer Robert Pollard composed not only most of the band’s music, but also the artwork for their album covers.

Pollard’s collage art is sublime, quite surreal and mostly quite minimalist. There’s a great deal of humour and fun (as well as some darker material) in there, and you can see Pollard’s love for vintage film and animation in almost every image.

As well as all the artwork for Guided By Voices, there’s a huge amount of content from Pollard’s personal sketchbooks and collections, some of which is published for the first time in this book. Great stuff.

Jazz Covers
Joaquim Paulo / Julius Widemann

Of all my many Taschen books, this is my most prized – a bumper collection of Jazz record covers, from the iconic cool of the 50′sBlue Note era to the explosion of colour and psychedelia inspired by the jazz-fusion records of the 70′s. The book also contains interviews with design giants like Rudy Van Gelder.

I bought this one while in New York last year, and I pick it up and flick through at least once a week. Superb.

I’d love to know some of your favourite art and design books, particularly some of the more obscure and vintage in your collection. Feel free to leave a note below.

This is not a definitive list by any means. I’m only looking at the 20th century and there are dozens of notable omissions. This list complies just a few pieces of design that I consider to be important, recognizable, and both culturally and artistically significant.

This list features only commercial art, illustrations and logos. No industrial design. No textiles. No photography. Nothing that’s been hung in a gallery (to the best of my knowledge). Beyond that, eligibility for this list is based on recognizability, longevity, cultural impact and aesthetic quality. These are images that have penetrated the Australian culture. They are icons, unmistakable and significant to not only the design community, but to everyone. I’d love to know what you would have included on the list, so please feel free to add your thoughts in the comments.

The Australian design goodness will continue on Thursday, when my Inspiration post will be a tribute to Brian Sadgrove. You may not know the name, but you will definitely know the work. Anyway, on with the show….

Designed by Ken Cato in 1986 – the Australian Made logo is used to certify products that have been substantially created in Australia, to help promote and encourage Australian industry. It’s a fabulous logo, with it’s hyper-stylized kangaroo and green triangular form making it one of the most recognizable and desirable logos in the country.

A cause definitely worth supporting too.
For more information go here.

Designed by Harold Thomas, and first flying on July 12th 1971, the Australian Aboriginal flag is a symbol of unity for a displaced people who have suffered immeasurable hardship. The red stripe represents the land, the black represents the Aboriginal people, and the yellow represents the sun. If it weren’t so deeply infused with its own significance to the Aboriginal culture, I think this would make an ideal replacement for our current flag. A powerful and striking icon.

In 1988, our currency began the transfer from paper to to plastic, and now in 2010 we have one of the most recognizable and innovative money systems in the world. Behind the rainbow spectrum of notes is a who’s who of Australian graphic design, with names like Bruce Stewart ($5, $100), Max Robinson ($10), Brian Sadgrove ($50) and Gary Emery ($20), all leaving their mark. I imagine it’s quite a thrill to know that at least half the population at any one time is carrying around your design work in their pocket.

While not without its share of controversy and criticism in the development process, it’s impossible to deny the significance of this logo and it’s contribution to drawing the eyes of the world to Australia. Shown here are both the bid logo by Michael Bryce and the final games logo (by Flett Henderson and Arnold) and while neither are particularly innovative or surprsing, they both possess beauty, style and power.

It’s a symbol that has had a long evolution, which begins in the late 1800′s and ends with the the definite 1983 iteration. The Boxing Kangaroo was most famously used as a symbol for Australia’s first successful bid in the America’s Cup. With it’s distinguishing yellow body and red gloves, the copyright for this logo was purchased by the Australian Olympic Committee for use as merchandising in the 2000 Olympics, however it’s not uncommon to see it bastardized all over the place, from beer coolers to tattoos.

Another kangaroo which has seen numerous revisions is the Qantas mascot, one of the most famous and recognizable Australian logos ever produced. Each version sees the kangaroo becoming more stylized and abstract, with 2007 delivering the most powerful and and beautiful icon yet, designed by Hans Hulsbosch. Not everyone would agree with that statement though, notably designer of the 1984 iteration Ron Dyer, who described it as a “waste of money”. He may have a point though, at the very least they could have set aside a portion of the budget to improve the food in economy…

Continuing the theme of evolving logos is the ABC, one of the most beloved (and debated) institutions in the country, which has seen its lissajous curve logo grow from a simple line drawing to a reflective, metallic 3D object. Like many people who grew up with it, I have a fondness for the 1975 – 2000 iteration, however this is a good example of how to succesfully expand and develop a logo overtime without the need for a complete revision. The above image was stolen from the wonderful people at Pip & Co.

The ABC is also well known for it’s highly creative and ever changing on-screen idents, many more of which you can see here.

Issues of taste aside (for the record I love the stuff) I can think of few other food items that can inspire such fervent patriotism. Vegemite’s diamond shaped logo, with it’s yellow and red palate, is one of our most long-lasting, having seen only minor adjustments over the last 100 years. The products reputation has taken a bit of a beating over the last few years though, firstly after being sold to international food giant Kraft and then last year with the extraordinarily misguided iSnack 2.0 launch.

Here’s a glimpse back at simpler times, where all it took was a catchy jingle and a marching band to successfully market your product.

Redheads matches have seen only four major updates in 100 years, with the anonymous redhead slowly morphing from something of a suburban housewife to the sultry figure we know her as today. The design is so iconic that entrepreneur Dick Smith was able to use it as the basis for a humorous protest in 1999.

Designed by Vince Frost and director Des Clark, this relaunch of the Australian Office of Film & Literature classification system took the existing symbols and combined them with bold flat colours to assist in easy identification. It’s an incredibly restrained, stylish and sophisticated way to approach a complex problem, wherein a clear system was required for use on a wide range of media and materials. The strength of the design is evident in the fact that the system works despite very little adherence to a style guide in its many applications. Given our love of all forms of entertainment, the system is now one of the most visible pieces of design in Australia.

Frost also produced a series of animations to be played before films in the cinema which can be viewed here.

Find out more about these, and other ratings systems here.

If you grew up in the suburbs of Australia, chances are you’ve seen one, if not both of these signs. While not as frequently used anymore, these symbols were designed to foster community awareness, and to provide a safe houses for school-children in moments of crisis. I’ve not been able to discover the names of the designers behind these, so if anyone is able to help me out there please leave a note in the comments.

Of all the design for government funded public services, this one has to be the best and most memorable. The Life Be In It campaign encourages people to be more active and to participate in sports and physical recreation. The man behind both the iconic illustrations and the world’s second most famous couch potato Norm is Alex Stitt.

While there are those who go out of their way to avoid them, it’s unlikely that many have successfully avoided at least some form of contact with Telstra (formerly Australian Telecom). It turned out to be suspiciously difficult to find a copy of the company’s previous logo, but thanks to Google image search & Vector Magic I’m able to present a copy of the elusive mark at a decent size.

While Telstra certainly benefit from complete market saturation, they have left an indelible graphical imprint on the country. They do seem to have trouble finding their feet with their current identity though. The stylized T & telephone receiver, originally designed in 1993 by Flett Henderson and Arnold, has seen numerous tweaks and embellishments over the last few years.

Daffodil Day and the Pink Ribbon are two of the most successful graphic devices in the country, and incredibly both are for cancer charity campaigns. The Pink Ribbon in particular has such strong brand awareness that now products such as Mount Franklin can simply adopt the trademark pink on it’s bottle caps to be effective. It is comforting to know that the power of design and marketing isn’t always used for the purposes of evil.

From humble beginings as Double J in Sydney, youth radio network Triple J is now one of the country’s largest broadcasters, and has expanded its empire into television, magazines, an endless stream of merchandise and various online enterprises. Present on every offshoot is the surprisingly modular drum logo. Triple J has been able to inspire the sort of brand loyalty that has their fans doing all the work for them, with tens of thousands of listeners proudly displaying the drum on their cars, furniture and schoolbooks.

Originally designed 18 years ago by the brilliant Andrew Hoyne, the logo has come to be synonymous with Australian music, outdoor festivals and youth culture, which is pretty powerful stuff. Hoyne are a shining example of how to evolve a brand with style and integrity, demonstrated in two excellent refreshments of “the drum”.

Two Australian record labels that have helped propel Australian music onto the international scene are Mushroom & Modular.

Mushroom, formed by Michael Gudinski and Ray Evans in 1972, was responsible for launching the careers of some of the countries biggest names, including Kylie Minogue and Skyhooks. After being bought in 2005 by Warner Entertainment, Vince Frost was contacted to refresh the boomerang logo. The end result is a very funky M with mushroom knockouts, although unfortunately since the launch of the design the label appears to have absorbed the Warner branding.

Not so with Steve Pavolvic‘s Modular, whose multi-coloured mirrorball logo is actively used throughout the labels many releases and projects. Designed by Alter, there’s a sense of fun and playfulness to the logo that’s absent from a great deal of design these days. What it lacks in scalability and printing practicality, it more than makes up for in personality. It captures the energy and spirit of the label perfectly. Excellent stuff.

Since Hopscotch launched in 2005, they’ve grown to be one of the largest and most respected DVD distributors in the country, with a dedication to delivering quality and innovative film entertainment. Mark Gowing‘s ongoing design work (from branding to packaging design) is some of the strongest and most beautiful produced in the last 10 years. Experimental, conceptual, and restrained, it succeeds in appealing to a wide audience without pandering to them. The power in the brand is that when you see the masterful grid-based packaging design in stores, or one of the idents flickr to life on the screen, you know that you are about to watch a great film.

While it may seem fairly innocuous to the average citizien, I can’t think of a design that has sparked more debate in the Australian design community than this new logo for the city of Melbourne. Spearheading the debate is the fact that the logo was designed by the Sydney branch of Landor, much to the chargrin of Victoria’s many graphic designers. This is understandable as the Victorian design community is proud, passionate and boasts some of the countrys best. There is also much discussion about the merits of the design – whether or not it accurately represents the city, and what value there was in completely replacing the previous logo. Personally, I love it. I can appreciate how some might perceive it as being generic, but it is bold, progressive and translates beautifully across all the requisite materials.

Before I sign off – here are a few relevant links that are well worth checking out.

Re:collection is a growing collection of vintage Australian design, run by the most excellent Hofstede. I highly recommend subscribing via RSS or at least bookmarking this site.

Pip & Co— in addition to being one of the finest and most adventurous studios in the country, they have a blog which features some terrific editorial and dialogue about Australian design.

Symbols of Australia is a book which has collected numerous examples of Australian design & commercial art from throughout the past 200 years. A wonderfully ambitious project that’s well worth supporting.

And finally I have a list of my top ten Australian album covers in the latest issue of Cyclic Defrost, so if you haven’t already picked up a copy, you can download one from the site.