Retail sucks in Melbourne. It’s most often an ugly and highly cynical operation designed to extract cash from consumers and give as little possible back in return. Not so for the entertainment industry. Melbourne has some of the best restaurants, bars and cinemas you’ll find in any city anywhere (which isn’t necessarily a bad way to prioritise things). But the shops! OMG. When I think of shops in Melbourne I think of florescent strip lighting and garish painted signs (spotted on shop front in Brunswick Street — ‘Annual Closing Down Sale’). And I mean Chapel Street [Google Maps]… is that really the best there is? Nowhere is there the warm functionality of a Muji or a Habitat (New Zealand and Indonesia have Habitat stores – is it assumed that Australian shopper’s lack the sophistication to support these sorts of ventures?) or the sparky vitality of Uniqlo or Graniph. Core department store, Myer’s thoroughly modern remodelling being the only glimmer of any change in the city [nharchitecture.net], although even this could just be refreshing the packaging on a poor offer. The quirky niche stores are there but are few and far between.

So here a few (not overly) humble suggestions for store concepts that could lift Melbourne’s game and contribute to bringing the city inline with it’s contemporaries locally and around the world.

Local is a reinvigorated take on the local supermarket or mini mart, supporting the idea of local producers and city farms. It is essentially a ‘market store’ with a farm perched on top. Outside of Melbourne it is possible to purchase goods direct from suppliers by visiting stores on or close to their farms. By bringing this idea into the city and building high (we’re talking multi-storey) instead of wide, there is a chance to create an innercity farmer’s network, exchanging produce via a fleet of nippy, clean energy fuelled vans and trucks. In store, produce could then be divided into two distinct categories. One category would be for unprocessed produce, sourced from local producers, straight to the shelves with minimal fuss and packaging. Pricing would be affordable depending on the seasons. This section of the store would seeks to mimick, though not replace, the fresh food market experience you get at places like Victoria Market. The second category would be for pre-prepared meals, put together in the ‘Local’ kitchens utilising fresh produce from category A. Australia has very little in the way of quality ready made food that you can take home and cook yourself with minimal fuss. It is often looked down upon for being of an inferior quality to food that requires more effort in the kitchen. This needn’t be true.

Format would be a new sort of music and entertainment store with some old fashioned ideas, namely bringing back the ‘listening booth’ as well as new ideas such as ditching tacky, wasteful plastic packaging like the (now way past its use-by date) jewel case. Music and entertainment megastores have been made redundant in the age of digital downloads and yet people still like shopping for entertainment on the high street. So Format would give us modern formats we can take home, that take up less space and are easy to organise. Inside Format, customers would be able to settle into their own personal listening booth to review potential purchases (like you see featuring in films of the 50s and early 60s). Then make a selection via the listening device in the booth. At the counter we’d then get to choose how our purchases are to be supplied: Are they burnt to disc, with the option of purchasing various containers for keeping your discs (preferably in bulk, like a photo album)? Or are they downloaded onto an iPod or a USB device or any other hard drive you may choose to buy or bring in with you? Or are they sent to you via email, removing the need for any container at all? Incentives to purchase products instore could include limited edition posters and promotional items, with an emphasis on ‘keepables’, similar to the racks that previously lined the walls of the Pure Groove store in Clerkenwell [puregroove.co.uk].

Kiosk follows a simple premise. It aims to support quality independent magazines from around the world by supplying an outlet of equal quality for them. Kiosk outlets would be deliberately small, intimate and ‘bookish’ spaces (ie warm and inviting, specifically lit, wood panelled interiors). This is for two reasons, the first being cost (business of importing independent magazines can be an expensive one), the second being to strip out any of the commonherd distractions most newsagencies are under the illusion that they need to carry in order to lure consumers in. There is a hunger for information from around the world that international magazines satisfy in Melbourne as evidenced by the popularity of the MagNation model [magnation.com]. Kiosk deviates from that model by shrinking down the offer to it’s bare minimum rather than attempting to expand upon it.

London Stores is the name given to a building slap bang in the heart of the Melbourne CBD [walkingmelbourne.com] in what used to be the city’s main shopping thoroughfare, which seems to have shifted up the road to the top of Swanston Street. The building seems to have struggled to retain tenants, and floors are often empty and under utilised. The London Stores idea proposes using the 10 storey building to encase a number of brands specific to the Melburnian’s desire to be part of the world and be able to purchase the same products shoppers enjoy on high streets around on the globe. Brands that could possibly be installed would be sourced from all over the world particularly London (Habitat, Eat, Marks & Spencer Simply Food, Yauatcha etc), Paris (Ladurée, Paul) and Tokyo (Muji, Uniqlo, Aoyama Book Center). Space would also be set aside for ‘special guest’ brands as part of an ever-changing schedule of pop-up style outlets.

Rebecca Wolkenstein is a person [rebeccawolkenstein.com]. She is also using her good name to single handily champion the work of Australian designers and photographers locally and around the world. Creatives currently under her wing include Beci Orpin (see What’s Up #59), Jonathan Zawada [zawada.com.au] (editor of Petit Mal zine [petit-mal.com] amongst other things) and Jason Pietra [rebeccawolkenstein.com/photographers/JasonPietra]. The blurb on her site is unusually relaxed and open too: ❝When I started the agency I had a bunch of really cool photographers. I was pretty pleased with myself, but then I met Beci and thought, “how cool is she!?” I thought why stop at photography? Since then I have taken on all the people in this country who I think are really special. It’s a small group. Is that snobbery?❞ The image above comes from Johnathan Zawada’s ‘glory scarves’ project [trust-fun.com]. Each scarf is digitally printed with a unqiue patten so no two are the same.

Beci Orpin [beciorpin.com] is another one of those hard working Antipodean Graphic Designers / Image Makers whose work rarely reaches the eyes and ears of those outside of the confines of Australian’s golden shores. Beci’s work is informed by her grounding in a textile design so it’s no wonder she’s contributed her creative nouce to the more interesting streetwear labels around the world. Recent projects have included illustrations for a ‘Reduce the Badness’ campaign urging Australian’s to use energy more wisely. Beci is currently represented by Rebecca Wolkenstein [rebeccawolkenstein.com] (see What’s Up #60).

Not Another Bloody Graphic Designer

You see, somewhere along the way Australian business got bored with Graphic Designers. They got bored with the ponderous approach required in forming cohesive visual identities. They got bored all the rules and restrictions they were consistently asked to adhere to. They became interested only in the immediacy of the message/s they wanted to to get a across. Not even the audience was as important.

This lead to Australian business becoming seduced by the language of Marketing. Marketing in Australia has become a way for business to thrust their self-interest on the often complacent Australian public and cloak it in the most amazing kind of jargon (marketing buzzwords like ‘Gen Y’,’ iGen’ still proliferate discussions on digital media and the like). In Australia consumers are rarely ‘catered for’, more likely they are to be ‘coerced into’ and said coercion is rarely subtle.

Many Graphic Design agencies have coped with this wide spread disdain for their profession by manoeuvring around the term ‘Graphic Design’. In Australia you will find studios, agencies or whatever calling themselves all sorts of thing such as ‘Creative Agency’, ‘Branding Studio’, ‘Visual Communication Group’, or just avoiding mentioning the term completely (the smart ones wear it like the badge of pride that it should be).

Just Get On With It, Mate

In the early 90s, the Apple Mac and the advent of ‘desktop publishing’ laid ruin to the perception of what it had meant to be a Graphic Designer. It was a crushing blow to an industry that had only just begun to feel comfortable in it’s own skin. With persistence and skill, many Graphic Designers managed to claw back some dignity for their profession.

This has been doubly hard in Australia because of the D.I.Y. mentality that permeates Australian culture, stemming from the idea that this was a nation that was built by the sweat and blood of it’s inhabitants (even though many Australians now recognise that there was a culture on this continent before the English settlers made their highly dubious mark). Why hire someone else when you have all the resources you need at the end of your fingertips.

The sense of isolation from mainland Europe that many Anglo-Saxon Australians still feel only helped to compound this notion. So you get people undertaking their own design work instead of seeking professional advice due to about two centuries of being your own expert and a stubborn unwillingness to ask for help. This attitude has only helped to muddy the definition of what Graphic Design is in Australia. Recent times have seen a proliferation of self-styled ‘image makers’ claiming the title which are, in turn, supported by a range of websites and magazines which I’m not going to name and shame right now. I’ll save that for another time.

At the other end of the spectrum you get a lot of well educated Designers over intellectualising the mechanics of their profession, further distancing themselves from the general public they should be helping service and the businesses they should be connecting with.

The Ire of the Beholder

I should summarise somehow, I guess. The most frustrating thing about this current situation is that there is a thirst for innovation and new ideas in design in Australia, exemplified in the exciting range of architectural and interior design projects that get commissioned and the many Design Festivals and Design Markets that Australians enjoy. But when you look around at everyday Graphic Design, the stuff that people come in contact with on a hourly basis you get the impression of a nation that doesn’t really care how it is perceived. As far as first impressions go, and despite the best efforts of this hard working band of designers, there’s a lot of visual noise and precious little actual substance.

There’s been a bit of a buzz around Korean design magazine, Graphic [graphicmag.kr] of late. Mainly because it’s impossible to get hold of outside of Korea and many of all us maglophiles are dying of curiosity. It also has a lot to do with the involvement of their new art director Na Kim [ynkim.com] who has been lending her unique blend of European and Korean design aesthetics to the magazine. Her extensive portfolio includes work for publishers, Phaidon as well as a self-initiated magazine project called umool umool [umool.net].

It’s a video post! Yes, it’s a bumper edition of the Reading List this month, so much so that I’ve had to make a video out of it to save hours labouring over what to write for each publication. Lazy? Moi? I resemble that remark! So here are the links to this month’s line-up and a special mention for ace organisation, Junior [lifeatthebottom.com] on whose website you can read an interview with author of We Make Magazines, Andrew Losowsky [losowsky.com]…

Wooooo [wooooomag.com] / Shop / Kasino A4 [wearekasino.com] / Pin-Up [pinupmagazine.org] / Slanted [slanted.de] / idpure [idpure.ch] / T-World [t-world.com.au] / Another Magazine [anothermag.com] / We Make Magazines [gestalten.com] / Acne Paper [http://www.acnepaper.com/]

[confab.tv]

Artwork for this first edition is by Aaron (as shown above).

Colophon [colophon.info] have just produced a publication on the life and times of unstoppable New Zealand based typographer Joseph Churchward. Not only does it include many lush examples of Churchward’s typographic work, both published and unpublished. But you also get a discussion on the ‘unsolicited’ work Churchward used to produce that he affectionately referred to as ’suggestions’. You can get hold of a copy via Clouds [clouds.co.nz/joseph-churchward] or by emailing Colophon direct.

005 Kill Your Television The fifth instalment in Sportspanda’s ‘Modern Disease Mixtape’ series features Loudest Boom Bah Yea [loudestboombahyea.com] / Port O’Brien [MySpace] / Jesse Hughes [MySpace] / Jacob’s Mouse [MySpace] / Bleach [RateYourMusic] / Plone [warp.net] / Videotape / Bis [bisnation.com] (BTW For ‘Back to Central’ see ‘Return to Central’. Oops!) / Ned’s Atomic Dustbin [nedsatomicdustbin.com]. There’s your tres exclusive artwork above (just click to open full size) and here’s yer podcast…

[Download MP3]

Door sign, also used on windows at Colette in Paris

Cover illustration for the relaunch of Case Da Abitare magazine

Typographic Illustration for Plastique magazine

‘Ready Mech’ flatpack toy design for FWIS [readymech.com]

Dani Klauser [dkgd.ch] is a Graphic Designer from Switzerland who has just independently produced his first comprehensive typeface family called Planeta and damn fine it is too. So darn fine, in fact, that Slanted magazine [slanted.de/magazines/buy/7], German ‘Mecca’ for all things typo-graphic has chosen to set most of it’s current edition is said typeface. The accompanying poster is rather fab too (unlike my shoddy rephotographed version above which is… well shoddy).

Available via BonBonKakku [bonbonkakku.com], featuring the typeface developed for Linefeed, name of Rhodia.

Katie Kirk sure is getting around [katiekirk.net]! Not only is she a partner in busy design firm, Eight Hour Day (wishful thinking, mayhaps?) [eighthourday.com] with husband Nathan Strandberg, but her sideline in cute but graphic illustration is flourishing too. Springing up in all sorts of random places, you can check out Katie’s work via her [Flickr] account (not forgetting to check out images of her picture book, Eli, No! while you’re there), purchase chunks of it via [iStock] or catch a glimpse of it in any of the venerable publications that her work has been surfacing in lately such as US Design institution Print [printmag.com]. She is also part of the Sweet Hair Poster Show [sweethairpostershow.com] at Art Minion in Minneapolis in June.