Applause for Applause
Client: Arts Foundation
The Arts Foundation needs to keep the arts and cultural communities up to date with its news.
A philanthropic organisation, the Arts Foundation promotes the arts, invests in NZ artists and produces the National Arts Awards, supporting artistic excellence through its permanent endowment fund.
The ‘Applause’ magazine is published as a companion piece to the foundation’s web presence, featuring recently awarded artists and updates on existing artists.
The Brief
As a privately funded and governed organisation, the Arts Foundation needs to keep its loyal patrons, artists and the wider arts and cultural communities up to date with their news.
As a component of a branding project we where tasked to refresh and update the existing magazine to reflect the new brand and a more energetic, refreshing approach to arts patronage.
Working with the Arts Foundation to refine the content mix and communicate clearly to artists, patrons and supporters, the central role was the ‘announce and feature’ the 5 awarded Laureate artists for the Year.
The Solution
We adopted a distinct format, ‘taller and thinner’ than the previous magazine to create a clear distinction for the new brand. Nuances in typography, layout and feature imagery all contribute to a publication that uses design to celebrate the art rather than compete with it. Careful use of colour and subtle navigation elements where used to approach the design with an ‘exhibition’ mentality, featuring the artists and artwork as the key priority.
The Results
The design was recognised as a finalist in the DINZ Best Awards for 2010, winning a bronze award in the visual communications category. The current design partner for the foundation continues to use and evolve the design, showing the ‘strong bones’ of our work and integrity of our design thinking.
