I designed a set of two invitations for my friends Bec and Dan. The first was an invitation to an intimate ceremony in the Byron Bay hinterland. The vows were to take place under a beautiful, ancient tree on the property. Bec and Dan were really drawn to a bespoke, hand styled look for this event, so I hand inked each name and ampersand custom to each couple. I used a japanese calligraphy brush to achieve this effect, with black ink on 250gsm sketch paper. To achieve the final look I scanned each inked piece in and did some minor editing in Photoshop before bringing all the elements together in InDesign.

This project was given to me as a freelance assignment as our team at the time hadn't the capacity to turn it around in the tight 2-week timeframe. It was a personal project of Graham 'Skroo' Turner's (CEO of Flight Centre Limited) and contained a collection of his notes on leadership and business as well as the future direction of FCL and his collection of proverbs and poetry.

This piece is by no means perfect, as it was briefed to only receive a rough edit (so as to retain Skroo's signature shorthand writing style) but I went to great lengths in designing the cover and contents spread, which feature old scans of printed wood type to convey the personal, yet corporate nature of the publication and the timeless concepts contained within.

Design, layout, proofing and editing, finished art.

The Executive General Manager of Marketing briefed us on this rebrand. He wanted the new look and feel to inspire both those who had never been to Europe as well as those who had been many times. The new look and feel therefore had to be inspiring, surprising and uplifting. We (myself, as Senior Designer on this project as well as a copywriter and project manager) presented 5 concepts to the GM, and this one was selected for its ability to match the brief and business objectives.

While I pursued many avenues in concepting for this brief I found the image of the hot air balloon borrowed European nostalgia from the 'Around the world in 80 days' era, the balloon itself was a great framework to house a diverse array of images of Europe as well as the typography. It also gave the expo a 'BIG EVENT' feel and may have contributed to the considerable increase in numbers of attendees that year.

The actual design of the balloon was a mixture between stock vector graphics and images and hand-drawn elements designed in Illustrator to create the final look.