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

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Nomis Catalogue
Ok, so we are sorry. There's nothing worse than promising something and then not delivering is there?!

We know we said that shots of the Nomis catalogue were coming soon, but truth be told, we're so busy with new and old clients it's hard to find the time to show it off.

A classic catch 22, but one of course we don't mind having.

So, to prove that we actually did the catalogue, here's a sneek peek. We will add some more photos soon - but no promises on when this time!

Nomis Catalogue

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Friday, June 15, 2007

State of Origin Posters - 2
Regular readers may remember our recent posting showing off the Nomis State of Origin posters we produced (including organising and art directing the athlete photo shoots, artworking, retouching and production).

While we and Nomis love the outcome, this wasn't the first direction we developed. Our original concept was to try and capture the passion of the State of Origin and highlight the divide that appears between NSW and Queensland. It really is like a sporting war and we wanted to reflect that in a campaign titled "Show your true colors".

So, sometimes good ideas don't make the cut but we thought it would be a good insight into the design process to show how we conceptualise an idea for presentation.

As you can see below, working quickly and roughly we are able to create a mock-up poster design that allows us to visually demonstrate the direction and discuss the campaign concept through with the client.

Poster Design

Related Info
Our Work - Nomis
Nomis Campaigns
Print Design

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Friday, May 25, 2007

Nomis Booklet

We've recently designed and produced customisable booklets and informaton packs for Nomis. Another piece of print design that we love, not just for the design but also for the functionality it provides the client.

The booklets are designed to act as a pocket-sized sales tool, consisting of individual "postcards" which are drilled and joined by a bronze screw in the corner. This allows for Nomis to quickly and cost effectively customise the booklets to their day to day requirements and allow for easy updates and new page additions.

We've got lots more work underway for Nomis, including a 24 page print catalogue and brochure currently at the printers! More information and pictures coming soon.

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Monday, May 21, 2007

State of Origin Posters
State of Origin
We've pulled out all the stops with this one. Nomis are an official licensee of the State of Origin series and have launched a special edition series of football boots to coincide with the series.

We have devised a campaign titled "show your true colours" and we will be designing material to support this as the weeks unfold.

Our involvement started with the organisation of the athletes, Willie Mason and Michael Crocker, and the respective photo shoots which we art-directed. We have some fantastic shots, courtesy of Brisbane photographer Damien Bredberg.

Then just 24 hours from the photography being completed we have designed and completed instore posters and point of sale which will be on display on Wednesday to coincide with the first game in the State of Origin Series. Usually we would spend a little longer on the concept creation but due to player availability we had to pull out all the stops.

For the initial poster please click read more below and keep an eye out in your local sports store for our poster designs for Nomis.

State of Origin Poster Design

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Wednesday, May 9, 2007

BodyGuard Max
Body Guard Max Logo
We have now completed work on the brand redevelopment of BodyGuard, the New Zealand based supplement company.

Hello Media was approached by BodyGuard to help re-position their brand and products for a new marketing initiative that would involve branding, label and packaging design, brochure design, a consumer focused website and an ecommerce website. Of course we were only too happy to get involved. Our experience on a similar branding project for Xtend-Life Natural Supplements obviously came in handy.

Body Guard Max Website DesignBodyGuard's flagship product is BodyGuard Max a Selenium and anti-oxidant supplement that protects the body and immune system from potentially harmful free radicals. It is the official supplement of the Canterbury Crusaders, a New Zealand rugby team that features world stars like Richie McCaw and Dan Carter. These guys swear by the supplement helping them to recover from training and matches, so it can't be too bad!

Body Guard Max Website DesignThe previous market positioning of BodyGuard was very research based and was only really known about through word of mouth throughout New Zealand. Our brief was to position the brand as "if you take one antioxidant supplement, you should be taking BodyGuard Max", showcasing that these supplements are taken by professional athletes, because they work! Of course they wanted a much more visually appealing brand too that would have global appeal.

Body Guard Max Website DesignWe wanted to make a much more engaging brand and to help achieve this the site features a variety of video testimonials from the athletes, the founder of BodyGuard and members of the general public giving their honest feedback on the products.

We're just waiting for some final supplement bottles to be sent over to us and we will then add some pictures of the bottles and labels. We've really modernised their labels using foiling and metallic inks, sending the visual appeal through the roof but more importantly really adding some value to their products and repositioning the brand nicely.

Related Info
www.bodyguardmax.com
Web Design
Ecommerce Websites

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Monday, April 30, 2007

Body Guard Max
Bodyguard, the official supplement of the Crusaders
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.

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Friday, April 27, 2007

Hello Media Business Cards

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!

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Tuesday, April 10, 2007

The Making of "AKA is Back" - Part 1
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".

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The Making of "AKA is Back" - Part 2
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".

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The Making of "AKA is Back" - Part 3
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.

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Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Print - Nomis Billboards
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.

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Thursday, March 22, 2007

Print - Nomis Business Cards
Just a quick posting to show the new Nomis business cards. As Nomis is quickly being recognised as a technology driven brand, the business cards feature their major technologies to encourage conversation when distributing the cards.

Printed on a lovely 380gsm stock with a matt cello finish, the business cards ooze the quality associated with their products. The reverse features a mettalic back with pressed logo. Mmm, nice. Mission accomplished.

Related Info
Nomis Overview
Nomis Branding
Branding & Corporate Identity

Related Websites
www.nomisfootball.com
www.shopnomis.com

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Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Print - Nomis Campaign
Our latest campaign for Nomis "It's time to change" has just gone up a gear in Melbourne and Brisbane with the imminent launch of "AKA is back" billboards, posters and instore point of sale.

We really blew away the client with our direction and final artwork to create a totally stunning and eye catching campaign. Billboards will start showing AKA on April 1, so keep an eye out for them. This will be backed by instore promotion and point of sale to ensure the campaign is consistent from street to store.

We'll go for a drive when they are up to take some photos and we are also putting together a "How we made AKA" blog article showing the stages from intial photoshoot to final artwork. It gives an interesting insight into how we go about our work. Stay tuned.

Related Info
Print Design
Nomis Campaigns

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Sunday, March 18, 2007

Print - Excel 3000 Running Shoe Leaflet
We recently produced a fold out leaflet for our favourite Australian sports company, Nomis, with the aim of creating awareness of, and raising interest in, a forthcoming product release. The leaflet highlighted the key performance aspects of Nomis' new Excel 3000 running shoe.

This leaflet was printed, folded and shrink wrapped and placed into 40,000 Nomis shoe boxes carrying Nomis' existing boot range.

The running shoe is a new market area for Nomis and, as such, it was particularly important to target current Nomis customers as they would be most likely to purchase the running shoes. By adding the leaflet to the football boot boxes, we ensured guaranteed target audience saturation.

Further promotion work for the Excel 3000 is currently in production.

Other work for Nomis:

- Branding
- Creative campaigns
- Ecommerce websites
- Sport websites
- Catalogue/Brochures
- Print adverts
- Email marketing
- Search engine marketing
- Photography
- Copywriting and editing
- Packaging
- Point of sale
- Posters/flyers

If you want to find out what we could do for you, just drop a line to hello@hellomedia.com.au

Related Info
Print Design
Nomis Print

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Monday, March 12, 2007

Print - Blest bras Catalogue 2007
With 72 pages jam packed full of swimwear and lingerie for the "Blest" girls amongst you, this really is the best Blest bras catalogue yet! This one even features Jennifer Hawkins... Down boys!


It's easy to get yourself one of these free catalogues, just head over to Blest bras and follow the links! Otherwise, just give us a call and we will be more than happy to send one out to you.






The catalogue continues our ongoing relationship with Blest bras. We like them, and because we are now in our third year working together, we think they must like us too!

What we've done for Blest bras:

- eCommerce website
- Catalogue/brochure
- Print ads
- Photography
- eMarketing campaigns
- Photography
- Copywriting and editing

Related Info
Print Design
Blest bras Catalogue

If you want to find out what we could do for you, just drop us a line at hello@hellomedia.com.au

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