10 Feb 2010
Article - 11.08.2006
First-hand experience of collecting pop ephemera was at the heart of a visual identity make-over for toy licencing company Haven, by Sydney's Deuce Design.
In the airy offices of Deuce Design in Sydney's Surry Hills an army of action figures stand guard atop bookshelves that heave with colourful art and design tomes. Among certain circles these highly-collectible figures have as much cultural cachet as the books they lord over; to others, well, they're just kid stuff. It all depends on the type of relationship a person has with the plastic figures in the first place.
Bruce Slorach, the 44 year old director of Deuce Design falls firmly in the former camp. An ardent collector, he knows a thing or two about the relationships people have with pop ephemera. So when he was asked to create a graphic identity for Haven, a licensing company that represents big global brands like the Simpsons and Hello Kitty in Australia, he knew that these relationships and not the products themselves would be at the heart of the project.
Slorach's passion for design would also turn out to be infectious: the Haven job started out as an order for a logo and some new business cards – the company was moving to new inner-city head quarters – but as time went on the job snowballed into supergraphics, environmental graphics for the new office, and much more. The business cards would be the building blocks that the rest of the company’s graphic identity would be built upon.
'A business card is an important communication device,' says Slorach. 'The main end purpose is to have someone keep that card and have someone link the company with the card.' In other words, the exchange of business cards isn’t a ritual without meaning – it's supposed to forge new relationships. 'But to actually cut through it needs to be something that's quite unusual.'
Slorach has specialised in the 'unusual' since the eighties where he got his start designing avant garde textiles for street fashion and doing installations in Melbourne nightclubs inspired by the marriage of art and nightlife that was big in clubs in New York City at the time. His work in textiles led to an interest in wallpapers and supergraphics, and he's made a name for himself from his graphic environments working alongside interior designers and architects such as Grice Lynch and SJB. Slorach launched his design firm Deuce in 1999 and he and a team of seven do everything from logos and wallpapers to environmental graphics and city parks.
But what kind of identity can you give a company that guards and nurtures so many established identities? 'What's interesting about the products [that Haven represents] is how they inhabit people's lives, especially if you have kids,' says Slorach. 'Rather than do product shots we wanted to work on how the Haven brands exist in the public domain.'
Armed with lomographic cameras and a platoon of products including Sponge Bob Square Pants, Snoopy and Bob the Builder, they hit the streets and the beaches taking thousands of photographs of people interacting with their favourite characters. The results are funny, charming and honest: Homer Simpson at the opera house, Sponge Bob at the laundry, kids in their spiderman gear and the like.
Lomographic cameras produce images that are a little wonky and hyper-saturated with colour. Deuce used the look both to tie together products that don’t share an aesthetic and to infuse the campaign with a DIY sensibility. Says Slorach, 'Graphically it was a great way to tie everything in and to modify quite disparate elements. It kind of unified them in a way a straight photographic treatment wouldn't have. It doesn’t add a layer, instead it gives the whole thing a patina and it makes the focus the overall image rather than the object in the image.'
They whittled the shots down to about 100, and this series of photos is the basis for the digitally-printed supergraphic in the Haven office lobby, a custom wallpaper and graphics used throughout the interior, in addition to gracing the business cards themselves. Each person had a series of ten different images, playing on the idea of collectors cards, the kind of product that Haven might put out for one of it’s brands. At a big toy conference in the United States the cards proved their mettle: Haven's colleagues not only loved them, they wanted to collect all ten. It was all the proof that Haven needed to realise what a difference good design can really make.
You can see the graphic identity Deuce created for Haven in the new exhibition In your face: contemporary graphic design, 5 August-5 November at the Powerhouse Museum for Sydney Design 06.
Sydney Design 06
Deuce Design
The Lomographic Society International
TAGS
+ Sydney Design 06
+ In your face: contemporary graphic design
Bruce Slorach, the 44 year old director of Deuce Design falls firmly in the former camp. An ardent collector, he knows a thing or two about the relationships people have with pop ephemera. So when he was asked to create a graphic identity for Haven, a licensing company that represents big global brands like the Simpsons and Hello Kitty in Australia, he knew that these relationships and not the products themselves would be at the heart of the project.
Slorach's passion for design would also turn out to be infectious: the Haven job started out as an order for a logo and some new business cards – the company was moving to new inner-city head quarters – but as time went on the job snowballed into supergraphics, environmental graphics for the new office, and much more. The business cards would be the building blocks that the rest of the company’s graphic identity would be built upon.
'A business card is an important communication device,' says Slorach. 'The main end purpose is to have someone keep that card and have someone link the company with the card.' In other words, the exchange of business cards isn’t a ritual without meaning – it's supposed to forge new relationships. 'But to actually cut through it needs to be something that's quite unusual.'
Slorach has specialised in the 'unusual' since the eighties where he got his start designing avant garde textiles for street fashion and doing installations in Melbourne nightclubs inspired by the marriage of art and nightlife that was big in clubs in New York City at the time. His work in textiles led to an interest in wallpapers and supergraphics, and he's made a name for himself from his graphic environments working alongside interior designers and architects such as Grice Lynch and SJB. Slorach launched his design firm Deuce in 1999 and he and a team of seven do everything from logos and wallpapers to environmental graphics and city parks.
But what kind of identity can you give a company that guards and nurtures so many established identities? 'What's interesting about the products [that Haven represents] is how they inhabit people's lives, especially if you have kids,' says Slorach. 'Rather than do product shots we wanted to work on how the Haven brands exist in the public domain.'
Armed with lomographic cameras and a platoon of products including Sponge Bob Square Pants, Snoopy and Bob the Builder, they hit the streets and the beaches taking thousands of photographs of people interacting with their favourite characters. The results are funny, charming and honest: Homer Simpson at the opera house, Sponge Bob at the laundry, kids in their spiderman gear and the like.
Lomographic cameras produce images that are a little wonky and hyper-saturated with colour. Deuce used the look both to tie together products that don’t share an aesthetic and to infuse the campaign with a DIY sensibility. Says Slorach, 'Graphically it was a great way to tie everything in and to modify quite disparate elements. It kind of unified them in a way a straight photographic treatment wouldn't have. It doesn’t add a layer, instead it gives the whole thing a patina and it makes the focus the overall image rather than the object in the image.'
They whittled the shots down to about 100, and this series of photos is the basis for the digitally-printed supergraphic in the Haven office lobby, a custom wallpaper and graphics used throughout the interior, in addition to gracing the business cards themselves. Each person had a series of ten different images, playing on the idea of collectors cards, the kind of product that Haven might put out for one of it’s brands. At a big toy conference in the United States the cards proved their mettle: Haven's colleagues not only loved them, they wanted to collect all ten. It was all the proof that Haven needed to realise what a difference good design can really make.
You can see the graphic identity Deuce created for Haven in the new exhibition In your face: contemporary graphic design, 5 August-5 November at the Powerhouse Museum for Sydney Design 06.
Sydney Design 06Deuce DesignThe Lomographic Society InternationalTAGS
+ Sydney Design 06
+ In your face: contemporary graphic design