This guy is popular, have just checked out his schedule at A-List Entertainment and his shows at the Atheneaum are booked out, then he moves on to the Princess Theatre (better get in quick, can organise your tickets via A-List Entertainment, then off to Brisbane and Sydney next year. Rik, our PM, happened to get along to a show and said he was in pain for the first 20 mins, particularly enjoying his adlibbing introduction. I don’t think a lot of comedians are funny, I don’t find Seinfeld, Monty Python and Space Balls funny (I am gonna get into heaps for admitting this, these are John’s all time favourites, Space Balls, please), but I find all things French and Saunders funny, Little Britain really funny, Summer Heights High, Billy Connolly etc (maybe it’s a girl thing). I also find Carl Barron funny, really funny. The taylormadesigns team were lucky enough to see Carl a few years back. If I pinpoint my particular comedic fettish I think what I find funny is a comedian’s ability to make a joke of situations we’ve all been in ~ Carl Barron’s show ‘Walking Down The Street’ I imagine captures these situations well. The banner for this show (under awning) is a little eclipsed by mega star Shane Warne The Musical (this is the winter version of signage), we will soon be replacing this with the summer version (so stayed tuned). Shane Warne the Musical lands here in December.

Beer’s going green, well not quite, but the way Cascade go about brewing their beer is; Bart Cummings wins his 12th Melbourne Cup when the threat of it being taken away by the ever growing overseas contingent looms and Barack Obama is the new president of the United States of America.  What a day for the planet, the world and hopefully peace, love and humanity.  Have been watching the US Election news feed via ABC World News all afternoon and feel that this is one huge step for mankind.  I don’t know why I am so elated by this news, I have tears in my eyes just watching the people of America get so excited about Obama.  Just feel he might bring about huge change, not just for America, but hopefully the world in ways we haven’t seen before.  Here’s hoping.  Just had to add that because it has nothing to do with this post about Cascade Green and their recent launch at the Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne.  First thing about this launch is that John potted plants (which I don’t recall him ever doing before) and put a Cascade Green decal on the terracotta pots (something he is much more familiar with) filled with native callistemons.  Apart from that and more up our alley is the external cladding on the building next to the Malthouse Theatre, known as the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (acca) which I often get to view as I turn off the Westgate Freeway onto City Road. Here they have used Corten Steel with an amazing visual result.  You can almost feel the dense texture of this material and the deep rust colour looks amazing against a bright blue sky - would like to clad the upstairs addition to our house in this, hmm not sure the expense though. Corten Steel as a material is often used in urban, landscape, commercial and residential design due to its strength, external durability, colour and texture aesthetic. It is also a good structural and aesthetic element for signage for all the same reasons.

Terracotta Pot Decals

Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (acca) (Corten Steel external cladding)

M1 Urban totem signage using Corten

M1 Urban totem signage using Corten (illuminated)

Before

After

‘Everybody Loves Rik’ … another client happy with the efforts of team taylormadesigns! By the way this job for RMD advertising came via our mates in Sydney ~ Signaway Signs.

Hi Rik

Roger
RMD Advertising

The Art Deco Winter Masterpiece exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria finished yesterday and we decided to take our 3 kids in knowing full well that it would be, well, pretty full of people, and it was.  So we weren’t going to be reading all those didactics the guys installed, (didactics are the fine print forme cut lettering applied to the wall accompanying the exhibit), this was going to be a visual experience.  And it was a feast for the eyes.    Art Deco as a period seems to draw on so many influences and materials: exotic, ancient hieroglyphics, Japanese, Chinese, modern, geometric, colour, black and white, onyx and jade, beautiful lalique glass, diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires, all cut to perfection and set in gold and platinum. This design period changed the shape of buildings and homes, cars, clothing, jewellery, ceramics, furniture, graphic design, font styles and it has to be my favourite period in design. 

It was also nice to see first hand all the work we did for this exhibition: gold stretches of vinyl over textured glass and lots of and lots of lettering, lots of plain black text but also gold text on pink film for the Art Nouveau section. Didn’t take any signage pics, so just these ones in the foyer …. (by the way we didn’t do these banners so can’t take the credit).

And another favourite Melbourne place, the MCG, even though the footy season has just finished too … but it looked so beautiful at the end of this stretch of the Yarra with all of the colourful sculptures in the foreground.  Back to cold today but yesterday was altogether beautiful and the city so vibrant and alive!

And we’re not talking antics of Collingwood footballer, Alan Didak (sorry, Melbourne joke).

Post by Rik Price: When I first started at Taylor Made Signs and someone alerted me to the fact that “The NGV (National Gallery of Vic) have just ordered 12 didactics for their next exhibition”, I thought, “great… but what’s a didactic?” Over the next 3 or so years, I have overseen the production of hundreds of didactics in a process that has been refined at Taylor Made Signs from years earlier. A ‘didactic’ is a body of text that is factual, interpretive and/or educational relating to it’s accompanying artwork.

(more…)