The great Muhammad Ali was the inspiration behind this project. We were asked to design an invitation to an open studio night we conducted as part of the AGideas Conference. Projects like these give the studio an opportunity to engage in creative, for creative sake. Our audience was predominately design students who spend a lot of time discovering the discourse of design.

Muhammad Ali has been credited with delivering the shortest poem ever. The story goes that he stood up to address students at Harvard University and simply said the words, “Me… We…” It is amazing how powerful two words can be. We recreated Muhammad Ali’s poem to pay homage to the great man and instill a bit of comraderie between our studio and the students of design. We printed the invitation on reflective stock which revealed the reflection of the holder. “Me…”

As the card is flipped over it reveals the completed poem. “We…”

If you would like get creative with us, get in contact.

Lachlan McDougall
Design Creative, for creative sake.

More and more brands are foregoing the big chest beating advertising campaigns that attempt to broadcast their presence to the world. This is particularly the case for those wishing to position themselves in the  cool end of the market. The onus is on savvy shoppers to find them, particularly when it we are talking fashion and bars. Certainly this was our experience on a recent visit to Berlin.

Berlin appears to have been able to sustain the vibrant design and arts subculture that blossomed out of the highly energised post-reunification period. It is a city that the longer you are there peels back layers and layers of creative magic. There are probably not too many other cities in the world that can boast as many concept, guerilla or clandestine stores as Berlin. But it does make you work a little for the rewards, a big part of its charm is that you have to some scratching.

And scratch we did to find a high end fashion retailer called Apartment. In fact having heard about it (through the power of word of mouth and editorial commentary) it took us three different attempts to locate it. Why so difficult? It is an unmarked empty storefront that occupies the entire ground floor of a lifeless concrete high-rise. Hardly an invitation to passers-by to come in and explore. What you see is not what you get. It is discovery personified. On the ground floor there is no signage, simply a big white empty space. Dare to enter the space you encounter one empty display cabinet, a vase with flowers and the pull of a spiral staircase heading down to a basement.

Take the stairs  and you find clothing, accessories and shoes from hot local and international designers. Very cool gear, big prices and a sense of personal discovery. The hidden nature of the offering is what gives it the marketing clout. It is counter intuitive. It like a secret club, and we all like belonging.

How do you build intrigue into what you have to offer? It is a question worth pondering.

Giorgio Armani is one of the world’s most recognisable and sought after fashion brands with end of year sales banded around at $1.69 billion. From haute coutre, ready-to-wear, leather goods, shoes, watches, jewelry, eyewear, cosmetics and home interiors Armani has become synonymous with high-fashion and couture worldwide.

Under the Armani ‘umbrella” brand are sub-brands that include Giorgio Armani, Armani Collezioni, Emporio Armani, AJ|Armani Jeans, AX|Armani Exchange, Armani Junior, and Armani|Casa – not a bad brand portfolio really is it? But wait there’s more!

The Armani brand also operates a range of cafés worldwide, in addition to a bar, restaurant, nightclub and now the Armani Hotel Dubai (part of the Burj Khalifa development) the tallest commercial and residential building in the world built at an estimated cost of $1.5 billion. The bottom 39 floors of the skyscraper house 160 guest rooms and suites, and 144 residences with Armani himself being responsible for overseeing all aspects of the interior design and style of the hotel – what I’d call an absolute ‘on brand’ experience!

Not only is the Armani hotel now operational in Dubai, but after signing an agreement in 2004 with Emaar Properties at least another six luxury hotels and three resorts are being planned in several major cities such as Milan, Paris, New York, London, Tokyo and Shanghai again all specially designed inline with products from the Armani/Casa home furnishings collection.

If you’d like to talk to us about how we could add greater hight to your brand and its story why not give us a call.

Dominic Guthrie
Client Account Director

Justin Gignac, a New York City based artist and entrepreneur, collects rubbish…pieces of New York City’s culture, documenting instances in time as archeologists have done for thousands of years. Gignac began
selling garbage in 2001 after co-workers challenged the importance of packaging design. To prove them
wrong, he set out to find something that no one in their right mind would ever buy, and demonstrate the
value of packaging by making what he found desirable. Looking around the dirty streets of Times Square, garbage was the perfect answer. Nine years later, over 1,300 NYC Garbage cubes have been sold and now
reside in 29 countries around the world.

I sell garbage
I scour New York City streets picking up trash. After filling bags with subway passes, Broadway tickets, and other NYC junk, I carefully arrange plastic cubes full of the stuff. Each box is unique and won’t leak or smell. The cubes are then signed, numbered, and dated, making them perfect for anyone who wants their own piece of the NYC landscape.

When Gignac first started reactions were mixed. Originally at $10 NYC Garbage was meant as a gag souvenir but when the price was raised to $50 and even $100 it became a piece of art. In edition to the typical New York City Garbage, he has produced a number of special edition cubes. Past editions include: The Republican National Convention, Opening Day at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field, New Year’s Eve in Times Square, Obama’s Inauguration and even St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin, Ireland, on behalf of the Dublin City Council.

A little piece of home
The project, Gignac says, evolved out of an argument over the importance of packaging to the consumer mind. To prove that it mattered, he decided he would nicely package up some…garbage. To consumers they have become more than this. The boxes which at first glance seem quirky have a romantic sensibility to them. They began to resonate with memories and the poignant histories of the city. NYC Garbage is a self-contained example of ‘material culture’, a living, breathing piece of the city. These cubes of garbage have become so iconic that New Yorker’s who move across country buy them to take a little piece of home with them.

Borås, Sweden

Milan, Italy

If you’d like to talk to some people who spend way too much of their life eating, sleeping, thinking about brands
give us a call.

Cassandra Gill
Director of Design.

Here at Truly Deeply we celebrate creative obsession in what ever form it takes, from brand design through
to installation art. The other day I came across ‘Staple Art – The making of Ephemicropolis’ by artist
Peter Root. With patience, vision and a very steady hand, Peter Root arranged over 100.000 staples in a
period of 40 hours. What can I say, some people are obsessed about what they do.

The staple stacks were each broken into different sizes to represent small scale buildings to large skyscrapers.
The whole installation takes up a floor space of about 6m x 3m.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What I really enjoy about this installation by Peter Root is that he had a vision and put it into action.
So many times people come up with ideas only to sit on them – eventually not doing them at all. Such a simple
idea once executed has created something of simple wonder.

Tim Wood
Design Creative and Staple Collector

Keeping Your Brand Promises
The BP oil disaster has now been spewing oil since April 20th. It is a disaster of epic proportions. One wonders what will happen to BP. Its share price is down, the pipe still not repaired and it seems like the clean up is an impossible task. The images and videos that have been circulated the internet are both heart wrenching and frustrating.

Big brands are often seen as invincible, but all brands need to look after themselves, building amazing brands more than window dressing, it is about creating a philosophy and living it. BP’s current brandmark was developed in 2000, to symbolise a commitment to a greener future and they haven’t lived up their brand promise, and it effects all of us.

Activism can happens in many ways and designers are global citizens too, and the spill cuts deep. Images can be powerful and evocative, meanings can be skewed and shifted and being creative can be soothing to the soul. A global re-design of the BP logo has been started by Logo My Way, uses can submit a new brandmark for BP based on recent events. Here is a collection of thoughts and feelings from around the globe in image from.

Lachlan McDougall

Designer/Global Citizen.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The fresh off the block branding campaign for the limited edition Absolut Brooklyn directed by Spike Lee is now out. The integrated campaign features an ode to Brooklyn, Lee’s iconic New York home base by current beat poet Lemon Andersen. The campaign combines the brand voice and spirit of Absolut, and weaves the brand personalities of product and place through the TV spot, a Facebook page, Brooklyn Industries t-shirts and a community tie-in with Habitat for Humanity.

Absolut Spike, Absolut brand expression.

The Story of the Truly Deeply brand identity
It was shortly after the relationship between Storm and BrandDNA was made official that we made the decision. A decision we felt we would recommend to any client in a similar position. Stop wasting energy supporting two brands and focus your resources on one. It wasn’t that there was problems with the old brands, we loved them, and still do. It was that we had a new offer, that couldn’t be successfully represented by one or the other. So nearly three years ago, on a planning weekend down the Mornington Peninsula, we made the choice. It was time for Storm and BrandDNA to fade away and be replaced by a brand that truly represented the new brand design ethos of the new company.

Now, rebranding is always a difficult process. A brand identity is such a financially valuable and emotionally precious part of any organisation that changing it is nothing less than a rebirth for that organisation. Whether the rebrand is a catalyst for the change to come or the final flowering result of a period of evolution, it will be a challenge. There will always be key stakeholders, opinioned interested parties, meddling well-meaners and general others who’ll need to be appeased to keep the process moving forward. So, when it comes to rebranding a creative organisation, the difficulty can increase exponentially, when it comes to a creative branding agency rebranding itself it can get very, very challenging.

The biggest challenge was that we’re all experts in branding. Combined, we have hundreds of years of experience in branding every conceivable entity. We know the strategies, we know the theory. We’ve certainly got the practical experience. So we thought the rules we’re different for us. We thought we could short-circuit the process, get straight down to creating a next generation brand for a next generation branding company. Diving straight in created some interesting elements but nothing of substance we could agree on. We couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

What’s in a name?
Hundreds. Hundreds and hundreds of names. We considered thousands of names, some lasted seconds, some days, some months, one was even registered, one nearly caused revolt, but none we’re right. The process lost momentum, we we’re distracted by the day to day of creating successful brands for everyone else and let our own branding process slide. It wasn’t till we realised we we’re cheating ourselves and our new brand, by not imposing the rigour and discipline we apply to other brands. The first thing we tell any client is that to create a successful brand you need absolute clarity about what your trying to achieve. We thought we could skip it because we knew better. It reminds me of one of my dear mam’s sayings ‘Nearer the church. Further from God.’

Being truly true
It was only when we gave the project the respect it deserved and ourselves the time to apply the process we’ve created to craft brands for our clients. We started to get results we really liked and results that were clearly bringing the brand to life. We had a brand essence, values and personality we all agreed on. Our brand essence ‘A brand inspired design obsession’  set the standard. We had a name that embodied the balance of our creative and strategic talents, while resonating with the true emotional power of strong branding. We became Truly Deeply. An organisation obsessive about creating brands that evoke powerful emotional connections with customers.

The brandmark
Now we had our name and a great brand descriptor ‘Re-imagining Brands’ we needed to focus on the visual language that would bring our brand to life. Our brand decode process enabled us to have a strategic direction as to the visual style the brandmark should take. We conceived of a brandmark with the traditional cues of blue chip consulting agency, softened and embellished to reflect our creative obsessions. The brandmark was crafted from Hubert Jocham’s beautiful Narziss Drops font (before Hubert created all the different weights). To accompany the brandmark we created a series of stunning illustration, our menagerie of fantastic creatures.

The bestiary
I can reveal now, no animals were harmed in this re-branding. These illustrations are the part of the identity that really brings the brand to life. They’re magical, intriguing and have an artistic quality. There’s a different one on everybody’s business cards. They’re a natural talking point. For me, it’s their ability to be interpreted, sometimes in surprising ways, that keeps them fresh and entertaining. It’s funny, now, to think how concerned we were about them. We thought they could be too challenging for our clients, too gory for some of the more sensitive souls. But every one loves them, some clients collect them, wanting to know if there’s more they’ve missed out on. I’ve only heard one comment in the months we’ve been using them about them being bloody, and that was from a local government client naturally averse to anything not certified  politically correct. Here’s the full collection for your viewing pleasure:

If a job’s worth doing…

Creating a great brand is a difficult process. You can trim budgets and push boundaries. But if you don’t do it properly, with the respect and diligence it deserves, you can’t expect to get the results your brand deserves. Spend the time and effort at the start getting your strategy and thinking resolved and the creative will flow, forming a brand that will be a truly powerful expression of your essence. If you’d like to talk to us about our branding or yours give us a call.

Derek Carroll
Director of Design
& Poker of Bears

A Clever Piece of Brand Storytelling
German medical technology brand EIZO produces medical imaging high precision displays for the examination and diagnosis of radiographs. When it came to creating a piece of brand communication to capture the attention and tickle the funny bone (medical term) of their doctor clientele, they hit it out of the park with this clever and revealing take on the pin-up calendar. The medical imaging of the pin-up calendar shows-off the capabilities of EIZOs equipment in absolute detail, whilst having a laugh at themselves – a fresh and endearing approach chock-full of brand personality in what is typically a dry and uninspiring category.

Love it.

We found this little pearler on advertolog.com
Ad created by the clever guys at a ‘Butter’ in Berlin & Duesseldorf, Germany.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here at Truly Deeply, we occasionally take a break from our brand design obsession to enjoy random acts of creativity – just like this cool animation created with tea candles.

Nice.