We're a Brisbane website design and print design company. And this is our latest work, news and ramblings. Enjoy.

Following on from our recent success with Xtend-Life Natural Supplements we have picked up another client in the vitamins and supplement industry, also based in New Zealand.

Body Guard Max is a Selenium based supplement that protects the body and immune system from potentially harmful free radicals. It is the official supplement of the Canterbury Crusaders rugby team in New Zealand, taken daily by the likes of Dan Carter and Richie McCaw.

We were approached by Froojoo, the distribution and marketing company for Body Guard Max, to give the whole brand a facelift and new direction.

We have been working on branding, label designs, a new consumer and ecommerce website design and supporting print brochures to re-position their products and change their marketing direction.

The fruits of this new project will be launching hopefully next week, so we look forward to bringing you some more news and visuals shortly.

Labels: BodyGuard Max, Branding, Ecommerce, Print, Websites

When we heard about a new printing technique, called Metalix, from our printers, we had to try it our for ourselves.

Using just a silver Pantone layer positioned underneath the CMYK inks, a whole range of metallic colours are available. Why is this good? Well, put simply it opens up a complete metallic print service at a cost that is comparable to normal 4-colour (CMYK) printing.

We liked the sound of this!

So, to be able to recommend it, we made some new cards for ourselves. The result, well, very impressive. (The photograph above does not capture the metallic effect fantastically). Good enough to recommend to our clients - most definately!

If you would like to see what this new printing technique looks like, just get in touch and we will send you out some samples. You'll be amazed at how cost-friendly they are too!

Labels: Business Cards, Hello Media, Print

Whilst searching through our file back-ups I found some test photography for a shoot back in 2003 for the Select Model website.

Before Australia and Hello Media, I was the Art Director for Box, a creative agency in London. One of the many great accounts was Select Model Management.

I have to admit it was a little daunting at first, working with some of the most photographed UK models but it was a fantastic day and great experience.

It's a shame to let these photos hide away on the back-up discs!

Labels: Photography, Websites

The "Aka is Back" campaign has proven extremely succesful for our client Nomis and we have had a huge amount of feedback about the imagery of AKA that is currently gracing billboards, sport shops and websites throughout Australia.

As a bit of an insight into our work, we thought we would graphically walk you through the steps in making this image from start to finish.

There are quite a few steps so we have split this post up in to 3 stages.

So, let's start at the end and then shoot back to the beginning.


We wanted to play on AKA's "Love me or hate me" attitude, creating an almost mythological AKA god of AFL. The concept was based around Neptune, the god of the sea, where instead of a trident, we have AKA holding his Nomis football boots - his weapons to destroy those around him on the playing field (his sea).

With this in mind the imagery had to be moody and serious but at the same time keep AKA's naturally cheekiness.

Let me just put in a sort of foot note here (obviously it's a near-the-top note but I couldn't think what to call it), for those of you who don't know AKA (or Jason Akermanis as he is otherwise known), he is one of the highest profile Australian Football players. He's well known for his great skill but also his sometimes brash, over-confident demeanor. He's a colourful, outspoken character. Perfect for this Nomis campaign!


So this is where we began. We enlisted the services of two-time winner of Australia's Editorial Photographer of the Year, Damien Breberg, to capture AKA's personality on film. Then, we got to work.


To help create a mythological image, we wanted to make AKA look like he was almost made out of stone and really emphasise his muscle definition.

We started by simply knocking all the colour out of the image to give us a base to work from.


Then we looked at creating some overlay layer effects to really adjust the brightness and contrast in the image. Of course there are a lot of tricks to this but I am keeping the explanation as simple as possible here.


The next stage above was to add some subtle colours into the skin tone. We didn't want a completely grey scale image as it was too cold. It's a little hard to see the detailed colour in these reduced images, but at the end I'll post a close up image of the detail to show the effect we were after.


As the Nomis boots needed to be a focus too of the image, we brought them back into full colour. This ensures that the Nomis products become the centre of the advertising rather than an addition to the AKA image. It also helped to strengthen the message of "I am AKA and these are my weapons".


Now the basics were out of the way we could concentrate on the finer details of the imagery. The eye area of the face was never too clear and from the image treatments we had previously done, the eye area had become so dark there was no definition. Having eye contact with AKA is extremely important to create an image that is both engaging and captivating. When you walk past this image you need to feel like he is looking at you personally.

We also tidied up the beard and other facial areas.


Next we started to work on defining the muscles. Using simple gradient shadows with overlay mask effects we were able to emphasise the toning of the body.


As it was "off-season" when we took the photography, we could excuse AKA from being slightly well-fed... With a little bit of masking and lighting effects we gave him a slight stomach sqeeze.


The final area for some airbrushing was his stomach. We wanted to over-do his six-pack to help create this "mythological" feel. Again using shadows and highlights with plenty of layer effects we suceeded in the effect we were after.


Finally we just added some more shadow and highlights to the base of his stomach. We knew we would be having a "ripped paper" edge to the bottom of the image (to tie in with Nomis' branding) so were happy to leave this as is for the time-being.

The next stage was to create the backgound and you can follow this in "The making of AKA Part 2".

Labels: AKA, Nomis, Print

This follows on from "The making of AKA is back - Part 1", showing the steps in creating the Nomis print campaign.


After completing work on AKA we needed to create the environment that he was to be standing in. This of course had to be relevant to the brand and himself. We wanted to add weather effects to help create the correct mood and attitude of the concept.

So we literally started out by having a layered file with AKA in the foreground on a black background.


For the forefront of the background we found a stock image of a playing field. It didn't really matter what was in this image, just that the perspective of the grass was correct.


With a little bit of airbrushing, an area of the grass was taken into the AKA image and mirrored on each side of the picture. We wanted to try and keep a symmeticral aspect to the image to again help the focus of the image be AKA and the boots. (Your eye naturally gets drawn into the centre of the image).


The next step was to simply remove the colour from the grass.


Next, a little trick to help the perspective of the image was to fade out the grass into black.


Happy with the foreground, we could next look at the stadium behind AKA. This was a little tricky as we could not source a stock image of a stadium with the correct angles and perspectives we required.

Our solution was a quick trip to a stadium to take a photograph ourselves. We would obviously need to be careful to ensure that the final image did not really resemble the photograph and any advertising, logos, sponsorship visible in the original photograph were removed.


Taking as much detail as we could out of the stadium image we created a simple but effective stadium backdrop. We copied this into the composition.


To finish off the stadium we just duplicated the first stadium image, flipped it over and positioned it on the other side of the image. Again creating this symmeticral effect helping draw your eye into the centre of the image. It also helps create this "hero" effect.

All that was now left to do was the sky and this is covered in "The making of AKA is back - Part 3".

Labels: AKA, Nomis, Print

This follows on from "The making of AKA is back - Part 2", showing the steps in creating the Nomis print campaign.

With AKA and the stadium complete we needed to finish off the concept by adding the sky.

As previously discussed in parts 1 and 2 we wanted to create a stormy effect to further strengthen the mood and attitute of the composition. We also wanted to create an effect in the sky with the sun breaking through the clouds forming "devil's horns". This would not only look fantastic, adding a great focus, but also plays along with AKA's personality and give an extra attitude to the campaign.


We started off by finding some suitable stock photography of clouds.


We then airbrushed the clouds to form a horn shape, removed all the colour, and altered the brightness and contrast to make the clouds more dramatic.


After completing the cloud effect we wanted, we transferred the clouds to our composition file. As the original size of the cloud image was smaller than the image of AKA we were working with, we would need to work on this further. (We were designing this for use on billboards 12m wide so our initial photoshop file was very large!)


Firstly we just copied and flipped over the image of the clouds, creating the horn effect on both sides.


Again using the clone tool in Photoshop we filled in the rest of the sky.


Once the sky was quickly filled in, we spent further time refining the clouds to make them look more realistic and less "cloned" and add further emphasis to the "horns".


Now the composition was nearly complete and just required a rain effect adding over the clouds. We did this using a process very similar to this.


And there we have it. We tidied off the bottom of the image by adding a ripped paper effect and "AKA was back!"

We hope the this has given you a small insight into the creative process that we go through and some of the techniques we use to take an initial photo shoot to a finished campaign.

Labels: AKA, Nomis, Print

We've just launched a small flash and html website for Dutch, Brisbane based photographer, and our good friend, JJ de Ranitz.

The site showcases Jaap's diversity behind the camera, featuring a selection of portfolios across architecture to fashion. We think his work is definately worth checking out!

Related Info
Web Design
www.jjderanitz.com

Labels: JJ de Ranitz, Photography, Websites

The Nomis "AKA is back" billboards are now up! Keep an eye out for them throughout Brisbane and Melbourne.


We will be out and about to take some better quality photographs shortly and we are putting together a "from start to finish" guide to give an insight into the making of these billboards. We will post this shortly.

Labels: AKA, Nomis, Print