Boutique firm’s branding scoops three prestigious New York design awards
By Craig Sisterson
AN AWARD-WINNING design firm has praised its “brave and trusting” law firm client for its part in a stunningly successful branding project that won another three international design awards in New York in the past fortnight. Alt Group, an Auckland-based multidisciplinary strategic design company, won two coveted Pencils (a Silver and a Bronze) at the prestigious One Show Design awards on 4 May for its work with recently established boutique, Auckland-based intellectual property and technology law firm Hudson Gavin Martin.
The One Show Design awards are a highly respected worldwide competition rewarding “true excellence in design”, widely regarded as one of the advertising industry’s most prestigious international award programmes. Alt Group was the only New Zealand company to take home a Pencil from the 2009 awards. They overcame thousands of entries from around the world to win the two coveted Pencils; a Silver in the Corporate Identity – Campaign category, and a Bronze in Collateral Promotion.
Alt Group designed the branding, corporate artwork, print advertising, and marketing collateral for Hudson Gavin Martin. The boutique firm’s brief to Alt Group was “not to feel constrained by what they would traditionally do for lawyers and to test our boundaries,” said partner Mark Gavin. The three founding partners wanted to create a clear sense of the new firm’s identity – “quality work for quality clients but with a sense of fun internally and externally” – and together with Alt Group, created “the firm”.
Alt Group devised an identity for Hudson Gavin Martin based around the concept of “three”, which Alt Group creative director Dean Poole says continuously arises throughout many cultures and customs, in both serious and humorous ways. “Colloquialism has it that all good things come in threes, ...with Hudson Gavin Martin we began a witty and engaging conversation that reveals ‘ideas’ that come in threes”. In the marketing collateral, Poole notes the three wise men, Hudson, Gavin, and Martin “are ‘cool, calm and collected,’ they advise on clients’ ‘assets, equities and liabilities,’ and are ‘ready, willing and able’”. The concept of three was also utilised in relation to the boutique firm’s core business of intellectual property and technology law – the identity uses the copyright, trademark, and registered symbols – as well as the firm’s Christmas gift packs that Alt Group designed for Hudson Gavin Martin’s clients. Alt Group even incorporated the three intellectual property symbols into the design of the gift packs, transforming the word Christmas into ©h®is™as.
The two wins at the One Show Design awards are really the “icing on the cake” for Alt Group, says managing director Ben Corban. “The One Show is a benchmark competition for our firm and these awards are a great endorsement for New Zealand design on the international stage.” The dual win capped a memorable week for Alt Group and Hudson Gavin Martin, as four nights before the same branding project had scooped the coveted Gold Cube Award at the influential Art Directors Club (ADC) Awards in New York. Those awards, which have been running since 1920, recognise the best work of the year in print and broadcast advertising, interactive media, graphic design, publication design, packaging, photography, and illustration.
Once again, Alt Group led the way for New Zealand designers, being the only New Zealand design company to win a prize at the 2009 ADC Awards, touted as the Oscars of the design world. “The ADC Awards are seen as being one of the highest accolades in the industry, so for our work to have taken home a Gold Cube against leading international firms is a real achievement for New Zealand design,” said Poole.
Entries for the ADC Awards are rigorously judged, with the awards notoriously difficult to win. “Winners take their place in the industry’s revered archive of the best work ever produced in advertising, design, photography, illustration, and interactive media,” said the ADC. All winning works are documents in the Art Directors Annual (the longest running archive of leading creative work in global advertising, design, and visual communications), and will be exhibited at the ADC Gallery in New York. Alt Group also received an Environmental Design Merit for the Hudson Gavin Martin Corporate Art Collection.
The collaboration between Alt Group and Hudson Gavin Martin has been an astounding success, with these recent awards merely the latest in a long line of accolades the branding project has received. The project won the supreme Graphic Stringer at the 2008 Designers Institute of New Zealand BeST Design Awards, a Certificate of Typographic Excellence from the Type Directors Club in New York in February, and was a finalist in the Editorial Category of the UK Design Week Awards and Australian Creative magazine’s Hotshop Awards.
And in April, Alt Group announced that their designs for Hudson Gavin Martin were amongst the select group chosen for inclusion in the 2009 edition of the United Kingdom’s internationally acclaimed Creative Review Annual, which showcases the finest creative work produced worldwide in 2008.
NZLawyer, 15 May 2009