To reimagine the visual communication of Sydney New Year’s Eve – one of the world’s most watched celebrations – Sydney-based Frost*collective created a bold and flexible design system to capture the event’s energy, diversity, and global reach.

Maroni plays a key role in this refreshed identity, bringing structure, clarity, and singularity to a system designed to scale across formats and evolve over three years. The accompanying sans serif is Inclusive Sans. Paired with strong graphic forms, a vibrant colour palette, and accessible iconography, Maroni helps express a contemporary, joyful and unmistakably Sydney brand.

I came across Area at the Sydney Festival, where its Inktrap styles are used as a display typeface in all types of communication. It appears on signs about town, in printed material, and on the website. It is a good example of what I am writing about in my book From ASCII Art to Comic Sans: Typography and Popular Culture in the Digital Age, how typefaces that begin as special technical solutions are being used creatively for other purposes than originally intended.

ink traps were originally introduced to prevent clogging of letterfoms when printed on poor quality paper at high speed and in a small size. Tobias Frere-Jones, designer of Retina – a typeface with inktrap styles as an aid for legibility of small type in print and on screen, said in an interview that he could imagine his micro sizes being used for “very, very large sizes seen at a great distance”.

In Sydney, Area Inktrap is neither used for very small print in The Wall Street Journal nor for road signs on motorways, but instead for something in between.

The design by Re Agency won the Best Awards New Zealand in 2022 in the category Large Brand Identity.

Sydney Festival website, 2024

Screenshot from the 2023 festival report

From the Biennale of Sydney website:

The publication was designed using DaVinci (Virgile Flores) and Atlas Grotesk (Commercial Type). Editorial coordination by Cherie Schweitzer and Sebastian Henry-Jones. Creative direction and design by Zolo Press; design development by Fumi Congan; production coordination by Paul Murphy with the support of Base Melbourne.

See also the post about the Biennale’s visual identity.

Dapifer and Dapifer Stencil take the leading role in the visual identity of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

The low-contrast serif typeface by Darden Studio is used both in solid and stencilled styles, online, in print, and beyond. Dapifer can be seen in the logo, the season booklet, annual reports, web graphics, and other collateral.

The creative direction for the current campaign was developed by Extrablack. The individual items were designed together with the internal team led by Tessa Conn, with support by Amy Zhou.

Abridged version of the new logo, projected onto the wall of the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House.

Full wordmark as used on during the 2019 season, in capitals from Dapifer Stencil.

Dapifer Stencil for the 2019 Season Opening Gala announcement.

Solid Dapifer in roman and italic styles for the Swan Lake graphics.

Detail from the 2019 season brochure, with Dapifer Stencil Medium for titles and intro texts. The small print above uses plain Dapifer, with its more open “schoolbook” alternate for a.

Opening spread from the 2018 Impact Report, with a large quote set in ragged-right Dapifer Book.

Spread with selected quotes from press reviews, set in center-aligned Dapifer.

Infographic with key figures. Dapifer is paired with Akzidenz-Grotesk.

Staff T-shirts.

Far Kurnell is a collaborative photobook project between Sydney based contemporary art photographer Michael Garbutt and Melbourne based designer Yarron Felder.

This photo series tells the story of the haunting and forgotten land of the Sydney suburb of Kurnell. It beauxtifully documents the juxtaposition between the natural and the unnatural world that is so evidently in conflict. A bleak and tainted place that inhabits the fringe of modern society.

The book design plays directly on the displacement that Kurnell as a suburb has undertaken. I wanted the book to be sensitive to the imagery while building a subtle narrative between the photo pairing and layout.

Steinbeck (published through The Temporary State) was used for the typographic elements. This perfectly imperfect typeface lent itself to irregular and lively typesetting – nodding to the mutant, weird and sometimes unsettling landscape in the photographs.

The Sydney Symphony Orchestra (SSO) is an Australian symphony orchestra that was initially formed in 1908. Since its opening in 1973, the Sydney Opera House has been its home concert hall and performs more than 180 concerts a year with some of the world’s most illustrious conductors and soloists. The orchestra’s current chief conductor is David Robertson. [Wikipedia]

The current brand identity was conceived by Sametz Blackstone Associates in 2013. The primary typefaces are Emtype’s Ciutadella and Linotype Walbaum. The former is mainly used in all caps. The latter often is featured with its italics. The logo is in lowercase letters from Benton Sans by Font Bureau.

Branding for Canterbury Bankstown. The Canterbury-Bankstown Council is a local government area located in the south-western suburbs of Sydney, in New South Wales, Australia. The council was formed on 12 May 2016 from a merger of the City of Canterbury and the City of Bankstown, after a review of local government in New South Wales by the state government. The Council comprises an area of 72 square kilometres (28 sq mi) and at the time of its establishment had an estimated population of 350,983.” (Wikipedia)

This ‘Explosive Brand Identity’ by Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney won a Bronze medal at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2008.

Progress is used for the wordmark, its slightly amended sister-typeface Progress Two for headline typography. How do I know? The N is different...

The Flour Mill is a 5-hectare wide, old industrial region and is now being transformed into a residential area. New buildings stand alongside the historic silo structures. On the corresponding website of the project Telefon is used entirely in caps for headlines, navigation, section headings as well as small text passages and is combined with Proxima Nova for continuous text and Droid Serif in italics for highlightings.

Love the lP ligature – lower- and uppercase unite! I assume the k is custom-made, and not included in the font. This way, it is more similar to the k in FF Ernestine.

See more images in the Frost* blog.

Frasers property commisioned Frost* to create a Brand Identity and collateral, including promotional brochure, website and display pavilion for the $2 billion redevelopment of the old Carlton Brewery site in Sydney.

Our strategy for Central Park focusses on the vision of a diverse collective of individuals, joining together to create a global village.

This strategic vision of ‘coming together’ underpins all visual communications. The identity highlights each letter in Central Park with a different colour, representing the convergence of different people and elements to form a whole. The brochure features portraits of the visionary architects and designers, paired with photos of local people to communicate the vibrant diversity Central Park will bring to the area.

Huge 3D letters create imposing signage at the front of the display pavilion. A highly engaging website features an interactive map where users can explore the master plan, look at the architecture and experience the multiple benefits of the location, including proximity to transport and entertainment and lifestyle destinations.

http://frostdesign.com.au/wordpress/case-studies/central-park/