Latest News
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30 January 2012
Messy Design. Using old business cards for good!
Leading up to the Christmas break, we found ourselves with some rare time on our hands. Armed with a hefty stack of over 1000 expired business cards and determined to take advantage of the down-time, we set off to the local pub to formulate a plan. The business cards had been taking up space in the Messy studio, collecting dust for quite some time, but we just couldn't bring ourselves to dispose of them.
After a few concepts (and beers) were thrown around, we settled on the idea of using the cards to create a stop-motion animation.
Nutting out a storyboard stirred up a fair bit of debate. Whilst this project was ideal in releasing some creative tension, it was important that we take our audience into consideration: friends, colleagues, and clients. In the end we agreed on the concept of "One neat little package", with the humble business card representing our little studio and all the big things we are capable of delivering.
Many painstaking hours followed, as we set out to storyboard and test the entire animation sequence. The plan was to do all the hard work first, so that when it came time to photograph each frame, we would have a clear blueprint to follow. The excitement built as we discovered the perfect location, an industrial chemical warehouse, and set up our make-shift studio – our home for the next few days.
The photography was fun at first, but after the initial 100 shots we began to get a sense of what we had gotten ourselves into. It wasn't long before we developed a whole new appreciation for real stop-motion animators! This was much harder than we had expected. None the less we pushed on, fuelled by the anticipation of seeing it all in action.
After countless days working on the storyboards, shooting on the floor of a warehouse, and a week of video editing later, the result was a 1 minute animation sequence. For the finishing touch, we added the soundtrack which really helped to bring the video to life.
Overall we achieved our goal of having a bit of fun and creating an inspiring and intriguing video. The overwhelmingly positive response has been an added bonus!
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08 October 2011
Messy adds SALT to Sydney CBD
Messy are excited to have designed the City of Sydney street banners to coincide with the Australian Centre for Photography exhibition, ‘Murray Fredericks: the SALT project 2003-2010’. Conveying ‘essence’ over ‘place’, Murray Fredericks’s SALT series is breath-taking and awe-inspiring. Comprising of sixteen separate trips, sometimes lasting up to five weeks at a time, Fredericks camped solo in the centre of Lake Eyre photographing a ‘landscape without landscape’.
The banner artwork was designed with the type boldly cropped, to suggest that there is more of the landscape to see. As a result, the ‘L’ and ‘T’ in SALT also form the shape of a picture frame. The banners can be seen lining the streets of Sydney’s CBD in the coming months.
Be sure to check out the exhibition at The Australian Centre for Photography 14th October - 19th November 2011.
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18 April 2011
The Messy process behind the scenes
The creative process is one facet of design that for the most part occurs behind closed doors. Therefore it’s no surprise that many people are oblivious to the journey undertaken before arriving at that final design solution.
More than just designers, at the heart of it we are expert problem solvers. No matter the size, each brief is unique and therefore requires a tailored response. Not only is this the part of our job that we enjoy the most, but it’s this expertise that's most valuable to our clients.
In an age where design is at risk of becoming a commodity, the creative process is what differentiates meaningful and effective design from the masses.
At Messy, we bring fresh thinking to every project - which means lots of researching, strategising, brainstorming and sketching, mixed in with heaps of coffee, music, laughs and even field trips to get inspired. For the most part it’s fun, sometimes challenging, but finding that magical solution is always rewarding. It's what drives us in our messy little world!