This Crumpler logo stencil was designed and made in 2001. Its foldable design allowed it to be carried in backpacks for widespread, cost-effective advertising in the company's initial years. The Crumpler logo is now a globally recognised, brand identity for an internationally successful Australian company.

Crumpler is a successful Australian company designing, making, marketing and wholesaling a distinctive range of bags and accessories. The company grew out of David Roper's and William Miller's bicycle messenger business 'Minuteman Messengers' in Melbourne. In the early 1990s, furniture designer Stuart Crumpler joined Roper and Miller as a bicycle courier and started designing a bag specifically suited to the bicycle courier's task. Stuart Crumpler's bag became so successful among bicycle couriers that Roper, Miller and Crumpler decided to set up a business designing and manufacturing bags.

Crumpler's first inner city Melbourne shop was in Fitzroy on the corner of Gertrude and Smith Streets housed in a former shoe repair shop. Their logo is now a globally recognised, brand identity for an internationally successful Australian company.

Stuart Crumpler's design for the quirky Crumpler logo, a scribbly line drawing of a person with wildly messy hair, started life as a branding iron for Stuart's hand made timber furniture. With its soft edges, the logo evolved easily into a Crumpler bag logo which was then spray painted illegally at night onto bike paths and building hoardings around Melbourne. The Crumpler team were arrested in the late 1990s and the original Crumpler stencil confiscated by police. The folded 'logo' stencil dates from 2001 and it was designed to fold neatly, and discretely, into a courier bag. Roper, Miller and Stuart then also began pasting logo stickers around the city, and later, in 2005, began tagging fresh fruit with tiny Crumpler 'logo' stickers.

More recent Crumpler campaigns include an extended brand identity with imaginative new designs by Melbourne design duo, tin&ed (Tin Nguyen and Ed Cutting) who have created a Crumpler television advertisement and other publicity graphics including the 'Robo Bob' and 'Dr Strong-Tron' swingtags and counter-display stands where variations of the person logo see robot characters constructed from an assortment of Crumpler bags.

Anne-Marie Van de Ven, Curator. June 2008

Logo stencil, metal / rubber / gloss enamel paint, logo design by Stuart Crumpler for Crumpler bag company, early 1990s, stencil made by Crumpler, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2001

Metal stencil consisting of outer frame that folds at rubber points. Crumpler logo figure that folds at rubber joint at neck.

Publicity designs by Stuart Crumpler and tin&ed (Tin Nguyen and Ed Cutting), created for Melbourne-based Australian bag company, Crumpler.

These items were lent to the Museum for display in the 'In your face: contemporary graphic design' exhibition mounted during the 2006 Sydney Design festival in which Crumpler was one of 16 Australian graphic design case studies.

Gift of Stuart Crumpler, Dave Roper and William Miller of Crumpler, 2008

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