With its second season of competition for 2022 concluded, the Vega Digital Awards has released the full list of winning contenders.

Over 1000 submissions were taken in from 20 countries, clearly demonstrating the influence and reach the awards has in its mission of honouring excellence in the digital industry.

In this particular competitive season, MadeKnown walked away victorious with the Gold Centauri award. The winning work was created for our hardworking client the Australian Honey Bee Industry Council (AHBIC) and the redesign and development of AHBIC’s website.
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The team at AHBIC work tirelessly in their support of the beekeeping industry, advising government and also educating the public on the importance of bees.

Our passion for what we do is learning and understanding new markets and industries. The new platform developed for AHBIC is successful as it addresses multiple B2B and B2C requirements. We were pleased to be chosen by AHBIC to work on the project and are equally pleased with the recognition from the International Awards Association.

The awards are hosted by the International Awards Association (IAA), a team of individuals who have dedicated themselves to honouring professional excellence with award programs running at a global scale.

In a chat with Thomas Brandt, the spokesperson of IAA noted “As the world uproots itself from the stagnation it has been in, we are eager to see what unfolds next,” Thomas Brandt, the spokesperson of IAA told us. “Changes inspire, and it has certainly made its impact in the digital industry. We are glad to see talents continually striving in tandem with the world’s shifting.”

Impartiality is strongly advocated for by IAA. This can be seen by the policies enforced in the Vega Digital Awards, wherein jurors from varying industries and of notable backgrounds were brought in to judge entries. The organisation also equipped their jurors with a set of strict assessment criteria, further ensuring that only the cream of the crop rose above.

Grand Jury Panel

The 22 jurors who were onboarded from 10 countries are reputable professionals within their own industries. They can be found within leading digital enterprises, such as Executive Creative Director of LevLane – Martin Bihl, Associate Creative Director of ANOMALY – Joaquin Lynch Garay, Film Director of MichaelWong Films – Michael Wong, Principal Engineer of Verizon – Harish Srigiriraju, Creative at Mother New York – Kushal Birari, Creative Director of Beamy – Ronn Lee, Creative at Snap Inc. Yeon Sang Yoon. 

The entries were assessed with relevant industry standards to uphold fair assessments. Blind judging was also an important element in ensuring impartiality, whereby entries were judged on their own merits without being compared with each other.

Participation of International Brands

The Vega Digital Awards has been continually gaining traction in its fame, resulting in names of known entities populating its list of entrants. Direct submissions from companies such as HEVĒ, Bold Content Video, BLOCK TIDES, Bell Textron Inc., Leyes Media, New Moon, Down The Road Productions, Zampediverse Srl, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite, SVEN, UFC, ValueLabs, and Proscalar, LLC can be seen. On the other hand, there were also submissions made by entrants who produced works for these titans, such as Lamborghini, Camuto Group, JLO Jennifer Lopez, Designer Shoe Warehouse (DSW), Ballher Brand, Bianchi S.p.a, SM Supermalls, Teleperformance Philippines, Pushpay, Texas General Land Office, Panasonic, Formica Corporation, and Loewe Technology.

“We take pride in being able to serve as a platform in honouring these digital talents,” Thomas mentioned. “With the gears shifting yet again, we are excited to see what else the industry has to show us in these coming years.”

 

VIEW THE PROJECT

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After an intense judging period featuring entries from 32 countries, MadeKnown has won the Silver Award for Best Training Website in the 2020 NYX Marcom Awards. 

“We’re always extremely grateful for any recognition we receive”, said Trent Siddharta, MadeKnown Director and General Manager. “This is our 9th award and 5th international award, since starting the agency in 2012. We’re especially pleased with this award not only because of NYX Marcom’s prestige but also for winning it in collaboration with our long-term client Coal Train / The Real Group.”

The NYX Marcom is an international award competition open to all marketing communications and videography professionals whose creative expertise and proficiency are both celebrated and recognised.

“We are proud of all the amazing individuals, agencies and companies who joined the NYX Awards this year!”, said Kenjo Ong, CEO of the International Awards Associate (IAA).

“This win by MadeKnown is not just a testament to their unbridled talent, but one that will inspire many for years to come.”

 

As an agile team of world-class creatives, brand strategists and developers, with talent based in Sydney, London and beyond, MadeKnown’s ability to assemble tailored teams to precisely meet each clients’ needs has again become clear with this latest acknowledgment.

Among the nominations in 2020s NYX Marcom Awards were some familiar global brands, which included World Vision Canada, Heineken USA, BMW, Audi, Adidas, BBC Studio-works, Dell EMC, Unilever and Lexus to list a few.

“A NYX Award has never just been about the title. It’s an affirmation for the hard work these individuals have given for their work,” Ong said. “Their phenomenal ideas and concepts are two big reasons why the NYX Awards will continue to honour proficiency and expertise that transcends beyond normalcy.” 

“If the ideas and concepts are this exceptional now, we cannot wait to see what’s in store from the marketing communications and videography community in the next season!”, Ong concluded.

MadeKnown offers a comprehensive service, from brand development and strategy, website and logo design to integrated marketing campaigns. Trent defines the agency’s goal as: “to find unique creative solutions to solve our clients’ problems, not peddling the same products with a one-size-fits-all mentality.” 

Discover more about the project here

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MadeKnown is again grateful to have been acknowledged with a Bronze Award for our design and development of the Catholic Diocese of Rockhampton website at the 2019 Summit International Creative Awards (SIA) held in Portland Oregon USA.

The SIA is the oldest and most prestigious organisation that administers an advertising award exclusively for firms with billings under $30 million.

The SIA is the oldest and most prestigious organisation that administers an advertising award exclusively for firms with billings under $30 million.

Throughout their twenty-five year history, the Creative Award is established as one of the premier indicators of creative and communication excellence. Using stringent evaluation criteria and a blind judging processes, their competitions reward only those firms whose work exemplifies the best in its class.

This now marks MadeKnown’s eighth year in business with eight awards, having previously won awards from both the Summit International Awards and also the Queensland MultiMedia Awards, all for work produced with our regional clients.

MadeKnown was borne from a desire to bring all our knowledge, skills and experience together in one point and time. These awards again highlight the standard of work on offer to businesses outside of the southern capitals.

We share this new award proudly with the entire team involved at the Catholic Diocese of Rockhampton offices. We truly believe that small teams working very closely together achieve the best, most successful work. Our approach is designed to facilitate that and ensure quality, logistics and superlative attention to detail are all met.

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Shaved with a Mach3 razor? Played Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare? Flown with the One World alliance?

If so, you’ve used a product named by Jonathan Bell, a British branding guru who has dreamt up some of the world’s most well-known and successful trademarks.

But, he warned in a recent podcast not only is plucking names from thin air that customers will fall in love with an incredibly tricky task, it can also be deadly. In the 1990s a mix up between two similarly named drugs, not named by Mr Bell, led to patients being prescribed the wrong one — leading to fatal results.

Mr Bell, who runs US based agency Want Branding was talking last week on Freakonomics Radio’s Tell Me Something I Don’t Know podcast created by Stephen J. Dubner, author of the Freakonomics books.

Mr Bell has helped name US mobile phone giants Cingular and Verizon as well as internet radio company SiriusXM.

Australia’s own Hungry Jack’s is named after a US pastry brand after the fast food giant Burger King found it couldn’t use its own name in Australia as it had already been trademarked.

Asked how many potential brand names end up on the cutting room floor, due to legal and other issues, he said it was the vast majority.

“It’s about 95 per cent, it is a very high percentage failure rate, [you’ve] got so many names out there that have trademark issues and [pre-existing] URLs.

“There’s something like 170,000 words in an English dictionary and something like 300 million companies, so do the maths.”

Brand names, he said, fell into just a few categories.

The first is the name of founders, such as Disney and Tesla, although the latter is named in homage to Serbian electrical engineer Nikola Tesla, who died in 1943.

Then there are descriptive names, like American Airlines, and initials, like BP, British Petroleum, which are essentially the same.

Some names are descriptive in another language, like Lego which is close in sound to the Danish phrase “leg godt” which in English means “play well”.

Sirius is an associative name, the brightest star in the sky, the owners hope that gives the brand some extra sparkle.

While ‘suggestive’ names turn real words into brands. “Uber literally means outstanding, so it works well for a company with big bold ambitions,” Mr Bell said in a 2016 TED talk.

Then, finally, there are purely abstract names, like Rolex.

Mr Bell says his teams can spend around eight weeks concocting a new brand. First they decided what category of name they want and then research and brainstorm before presenting 10-15 possibilities to clients.

Part of the process involves ensuring a name works in other languages.

“Mach3 had to be tested and researched to death because we knew different countries would pronounce it differently. In Mexico, it’s ‘Mach tres’. In Germany, it’s ‘Mach drei’,” he told the New York Post.

“There have been examples of companies embarrassing themselves by launching products with inappropriate meanings overseas.”

Brand names for individual products are easier to create than names for entire companies, he told the Freakonomics podcast.

“Products get named much further down the management ranks. But with a (company name) everyone can be aligned on a final name and then we walk into the CEO’s office and he’s like, ‘I don’t like it, what else have you got?’ and you’re back to square one.”

A recent global rebranding was that of US luxury goods maker Coach. While it kept the Coach brand for its consumer facing accessories business, the company behind it is now called Tapestry.

The firm said the new name, embodies the “values of being optimistic, innovative and inclusive”. But the name, solidly in Mr Bell’s suggestive category, also brings to mind the craftsmanship and materials that go into creating a tapestry.

“The best brands don’t describe what they do or who created them, they stand for a big idea that translates into emotional appeal — Nike is about winning, Go Pro about heroism.”

You also don’t want a brand name that sounds too similar to another product.

That could mean someone picks up a competitor’s product by mistake. But in one instance, it has even proved deadly, said Mr Bell.

“Pharmaceutical naming is very complex because not only do you have to surpass the hurdle of trademarks, the FDA (the US’ Food and Drugs Administration) needs to approve final brand names and the reason is people can die if they’re given the wrong prescription drug.”

“There was a situation in the early ‘90s where there were two drugs on the market — Losec and Lasix — and some one died because they got the wrong drugs, so the FDA forced Losec to change its name to Prilosec,” he said.

The drugs themselves were fine if prescribed correctly.

According to thePhiladelphia Inquirer, “a patient who suffered a bleeding ulcer got Lasix, a diuretic or ‘water pill’ and bled to death. A heart patient who needed Lasix to treat fluid retention got the ulcer drug and died from a worsening of their congestive heart failure.”

That’s why, said Mr Bell, with pharmaceutical drugs, “you see these really crazy weird names”.

His favourite products to name were vehicles — both those that operate on roads and the waves.

“Cars are pretty cool to name and we’ve just named seven cruise ships for Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises.

“We worked for two years and we named ‘Quantum’, ‘Anthem’ and ‘Ovation’ and another ship called ‘Harmony’, that’s the biggest thing I’ve named.”

Mr Bell said he wasn’t fazed by some auto groups eschewing individual car names, like the Ford Falcon, for simple numbers, like the Audi A3 for instance.

“That puts the emphasis back on Audi. When you’re Ford and you’ve got Explorer and a dozen other different names — that takes away from the Ford name and means you have to build equity in those different brands.”

One of the brands he wished he named was energy drink Red Bull which, he said, sounded “powerful” and had a “notion of energy”.

But he admits to also loving one of the most derided new brands. In 2015, Google Inc became Alphabet, leaving the famous name purely for its internet products.

“Is Alphabet a great name? You bet,” Mr Bell said in his TED talk.

“The name is an idea, it’s a set of letters that forms the basis of all communications. The name encourages Wall Street investors to buy this stock as you’re making an ‘alpha bet’ — one that will outperform others — and lastly, it’s a real dictionary word, which is rare find these days.”

Story is taken from news.com.au. Benedict Brook. November 23, 2017

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We get asked quite a bit at MadeKnown what a brand is, and invariably we describe it the same way; a brand is formed from a relationship.

This more often than not is somewhat difficult for people to understand, eliciting comments such as “but my brand is my product or business?” or “my brand is my logo”. To which we answer, no and hell no respectively.

If someone tells you they ‘do branding’ and then proceed to show you loads of logos, politely excuse yourself and then simply exit the building.

A brand is formed, moulded and ever changing through the interactions and relationships it has with its customers. An easy way towards understanding this completely is to describe it with an analogy.

“A brand is like a person, or more rightly a friendship between people.”

You’ll likely agree that your idea or perception about who someone is, is formed from experience and affected and changed over time.

For example, you may form an opinion about someone when you first meet them. By how they look, their hair, their makeup, their style of clothes, their mannerisms, their physique, the car they drive and the music they listen to. This is their logo, a representation of who they believe they are and how they would like to be perceived. This image in itself has been formed, influenced and changed over time.

If you get a bad haircut or choose a new style of clothes, your friends soon let you know if it is right or wrong for you (or for who they believe you to be) and you may then make changes based on their opinions.

With this, we get closer to what a brand is.

You are obviously not only the sum of the clothes you wear, your haircut or your car… well, hopefully not anyway. Our perception of someone also comes from their personality, the things they do, they way they act, their culture, their values and beliefs, their morals and standards. From how they help old people to cross the street or to how they may steal candy from babies.

You can be the best of friends with someone and then one day they do something bad or wrong, and your perception of them changes. If they value your friendship they may take steps to redeem themselves, working to change your opinion of them.

Friendships are formed and made stronger or weaker through shared experiences, this works exactly the same for brands.  Which leads us to something very powerful.

A company can rarely dictate what their brand is, they can only influence it. Just as someone telling you they are your friend does not necessarily make it so, they need to earn the right, a brand needs to work to become positive in its consumer’s mind.

If someone is seen as being a good person it is usually because they have actually done good things, rather than simply by saying they have.

Like one of your friends, a brand is a perception you form about a business or product over time, purely from personal experience. This perception can ultimately only be changed through actions.

Although using how we develop friends is a great way to illustrate how brands develop, the role of people in actual brands is also incredibly strong.

To describe this simply, how many times have you been served in a store by a grumpy or non-helpful worker and thought, “I won’t shop here again”?

This is branding.

Trent Siddharta

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One of the first ports of call for any enterprise starting on the road to uncover their brand is to gain a thorough understanding of their target customers. Understanding your target customers is a critical step in determining your brand relationships and the conversations you have. Realistically, if you don’t know who you’re talking to it’s pretty hard sometimes knowing what to say.

‘Branding aside, understanding your target customers is also one of the most important points in any business plan as it helps to determine the right fit for your products or service.”

A great, and obvious, place to start in discovering your audience demographic is to gain an understanding of the generations and their lifestyles over the past 100 years or so. There are often many subsets to every target audience and the categories and boundaries of these and the generations continually blur and change, but it is still a great place to start and will help in gaining a basic understanding which can be further distilled down through more precise analytics.

Gen I

Also tagged as Gen Z, Alpha, the internet generation or iGen they’re the offspring of the youngest boomers. As this generation are still quite young theories and demographics for them are still under construction. What we do know is that this is the first generation born entirely into the internet era, and to parents who have already accepted and are immersed in technology. It is projected that Gen I will be the most formally educated with one in every two gaining a university degree.

Gen Y

Also known as Echo Boomer and Millennials they are the children of the Boomers, born around 1980-2000. Having grown up with computers this generation can be very responsive to internet campaigns, they process, mark and tag information quickly and can be especially loyal to brands and labels. They like things that are a bit quirky or left of centre and appreciate marketing that is innovative and humourous. Because of high costs of living they can often be found living at home or if not, still have parental support so usually have disposable income.

Gen X

Born between the early 60’s to the early 80’s, we also like to refer to them as ‘Friends’ (not our actual friends but the TV show Friends). An extremely large generation with many subcultures they are tech-smart, love to shop and can often be found sipping coffee and reading self-help books. They are now entering their peak earning and buying years but also like to save. Generally cynical, brands alone won’t sway this generation, they also need to know your product or service is good quality and value.

Boomers

Born after World War II and named basically because of the boom in births that occurred up until the 60’s. They are a massive generation in numbers and are now at many life stages: empty or full nesters, boomer grandparents, single, married, divorced etc. They are idealistic, driven and uncynical and the first generation who travelled on mass abroad for holidays and not to fight in a war. They evaluate advertising easily to determine its value and although are ageing still love life so youthfulness in marketing campaigns can be useful.

The Greatest Generation

A more American term (all of the early ones are really) this is the generation that grew up through the Great Depression, World War II and many great economic hardships. They were born between 1909-1945. They have obviously seen it all, over and over, when it comes to advertising so are a very smart consumer segment. They are the most careful and considering generation who want to know more about a business before they connect and buy. Just because they’re the oldest generation doesn’t mean they don’t use the internet though, usually with loads of grandchildren to buy presents for they are large contributors in the online shopping juggernaut. As they usually have pensions to rely on promoting the value in your products or services can be beneficial and as they are practical can be very loyal customers.

If your business audience is generation specific it will obviously be important to find out much more information than the above to help you in your brand, marketing or product development. Further research can then build on this through understanding areas such as target subcultures, location, income and purchasing power, family status and work and leisure activities.

Like to know more? General but detailed information is freely available from Census on population and housing from the Australian Bureau of Statistics http://www.abs.gov.au/census. Other than that, a little thing called the internet may be of use.

Trent Siddharta

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MadeKnown is proud to announce that our logo design for successful local start-up business Coffee Society has won a Gold Creative Award at the Summit International Awards (SIA) held in Portland Oregon USA.

The SIA is the oldest and most prestigious organisation that administers an advertising award exclusively for firms with billings under $30 million… phew, we just scraped in…

Throughout its 24-year history, its Creative Award has established itself as a premier arbiter of creative and communication excellence. Using stringent evaluation criteria and blind judging processes, its competitions reward only those firms whose work exemplifies the best in its class.

At the same time, we were also awarded a Bronze in the Health and Medicine Website Category for the website design and development produced for http://cultivatingwellness.com.au, an online health and wellness business also based in CQ. 

This now marks MadeKnown’s sixth year in business with six awards, having previously won awards from both the Summit International Awards and also the Queensland MultiMedia Awards, all for work produced with our regional clients.

In 2016 MadeKnown was awarded Best Brand Logo Identity at the Queensland Multimedia awards for our rebrand of the iconic Townsville business, The Butcher on Bundock.

These awards again highlight the standard of work on offer to businesses outside of the southern capitals.

As a company, we are extremely zealous about delivering a higher level of services, especially for our regional clients, something that has set us apart from our local competitors. We’ve been delighted and honoured to see the real value that helping them create valuable, consistent and relevant marketing has delivered.

We are also passionate about promoting Central Queensland as a destination and lifting local expectations and standards, especially in design and content delivery.

Ultimately our success can only be measured by that of our clients; so a big shout out to Ayden and Spencer of the Coffee Society for trusting us with their identity, we share this award with you both. Surely this must mean we get free coffee for life now though?

A big company hug also to the extremely lovely Stacey Curcio of Cultivating Wellness for the opportunity to create such a unique website. The thing we love most about our industry is learning about others and your knowledge and understanding of nutrition has definitely helped us to be better individuals.

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Big smiles around the studio after hearing we have received the award for Best Brand/Logo Corporate Identity at the recent Queensland Multimedia Awards 2016 held in Cairns.

“The award is for our rebranding work completed for the iconic Townsville business, Butcher on Bundock, which you can see a little bit more of here“

MadeKnown would like to thank Lori Thomas of Lori Thomas Marketing and More for putting us forward for the project, for helping us get our heads in the game and also for the fantastic Townsville hospitality.

Thanks also to The Media Awards for their constant work spotlighting the high standard of work produced in regional Queensland.

We’re proud to add this award along side our previous win in the same category for Gracemere based business Big Z Hire and the two awards won for the retail website for HB&Co.

Lastly, a big shout out to Jamie Wright the owner of Butcher on Bundock for trusting us to create his new brand identity; a strong and unique look that mirrors the brand and business perfectly.

Now chop chop, enough said, back to work.

Trent Siddharta

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With over three quarters of Australia’s approximated 15.4 million internet users now making purchases online it’s of no surprise that a large proportion of local small to medium businesses are starting to feel the pinch.

The rise of the online shopping juggernaut doesn’t look like abating in Australia either with sales on average increasing threefold each year from 2011.

“In recent years there has been a definite mental shift with consumers turning away from the traditional form of shopping, dictated by the weather, parking, queues, product supply and throngs of other people. Far gone also are the days when consumers were uncomfortable using their credit cards online or giving up their personal details to cyber-shops.”

The money Australians spend online is projected to increase by about $10 billion (yes billion) within the next five years. Consumers may still be concerned about security online, but more and more are still prepared to buy from the web. Faster delivery, easier returns policies, and many sites offering free shipping all increase the desirability of online shopping.

Considering the current lack of economic confidence it’s understandable that consumers are shopping around or ‘Google Stalking’ as we like to say. With usually low overheads running an online business is also becoming a very desirable option for start-ups who are looking to make their mark by simply running an enterprise from their lounge room.

SMB’s (Small to Medium Businesses) themselves are using the internet more to research and find suppliers (84%) and to place orders for products and services (71%).

Online sales still continues to be, in the majority, small-ticket items with high-ticket items lagging far behind by comparison. That said, the research consumers now conduct online pre-purchase spans both high and low-ticket products. Knowledge is now a much more powerful sales tool for both seller and buyer and ignorance is no longer bliss, by a long shot.

So what does this mean to local and regional businesses that are seeing more and more of their client base turning to the internet to research and make purchases.

In short, if you can’t beat them, then join them.

The options available to businesses that traditionally sold locally in-store to now also sell online are great and ever growing.

A great place to start for even the most mildly tech savvy is often an eBay outlet or hosted eCommerce website such as on offer from companies like Shopify or BigCartel. Granted these options all take percentages of sales at different stages, have ongoing flat rate monthly costs or limitations in company branding and functionality but the pros of the larger shopper numbers they can deliver far outway the cons.

Of course, the more robust solution of a self-owned and branded eCommerce website is obviously the ideal, with sales going directly to your bank account and the order notification landing directly in your inbox ready to fulfil. While this option can often seem the most daunting it is definitely in reality far from the case.

Having a company website, whether simply a branded information resource or online shop, is now becoming a must for the majority of SMB’s anyway. While websites aren’t for every business, (Facebook and social media platforms are fantastic tools for businesses like hairdressers and coffee shops), they are now necessary tools that should be considered and built into business models of even the smallest start-up.

In the end though the only thing that is guaranteed, for not just the onliners but any business, is change. Embrace it or get left behind.

Trent Siddharta

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Story extracted from the interview by the very talented Lisa Herse about MadeKnown, as featured on the AGDA website.

Creatives Fiona Booker and Trent Siddharta spent six years honing their skills in London for agencies such as Wolff Olins, The Team, Small Back Room and in-house at The Body Shop and Burberry. Upon returning to Australia, they saw potential in sunny Rockhampton with its nearby beaches and affordable lifestyle. In the scenic suburb of The Range, MadeKnown was born. Servicing over 40 clients within Australia and overseas, MadeKnown is a brand focused design agency proving that high calibre work can be done anywhere, regardless of location or time zone.

 Fiona you’ve had a well rounded career as a designer, the last 10 years have been brand focused. Trent you’re highly experienced in all areas of design production, photography and retouching. You guys seem like the perfect team for running a design studio. Are there challenges to being both a couple and working together? What are the best and worst parts about it?

“We constantly find the hardest part is turning off our working life to have a ‘normal’ personal life. We’ve only ever worked in this industry and when we previously worked for other companies we gave ourselves an allotted hour after work where we ‘talked’ about our day and then got on with things. We now seem to be always on and the lines have definitely blurred.”
“It did take us a little while to get used to working together, mainly because Trent talks incessantly, but we’re really good friends at the most basic level so it’s quite a comfortable arrangement.”

Had you always intended to run your own studio or was it born out of requirement after moving to Central Queensland?

“A bit of both really. Having worked in loads of different agencies and seeing the different ways people operated their business and studios we each had our own ideals of running a studio. We always talked about running our own company but probably didn’t plan on doing it quite so soon upon returning to Australia. When we arrived in Rockhampton we soon found a large gap in the market for a quality brand focused agency – there just wasn’t really anyone offering it, mostly your regular website and local graphic design agencies.”

MadeKnown has been operating for 3 years now, what are some of the challenges you’ve faced as Creatives running your own business?

“Just the usual tape recorded reply of ‘wearing more hats’. We both already covered a lot of areas creatively but have had to also learn to be receptionist, telemarketer, accounts, sales, customer relations and PR. Trent is naturally good with people but crap with money so I got accounting, he got everything else. We really laugh about this all now and want to ring our old bosses to apologise for being painful as we understand realistically now the different pressures of running a business.”

You currently employ freelancers for specific roles as you need them, are there also opportunities to nurture young up and coming designers in Rockhampton and the surrounds? And how would you like to be able to do that?

“We both credit a large part of our current abilities to what we’ve learned in our previous roles, employed outside of MadeKnown, so appreciate the importance that sharing takes to grow knowledge and careers. Being thrown in the deep end is a cliché but one that fits, we’ve both learnt an amazing amount on the job and from mentors and would love to eventually be in a position to employ young talented designers to repay our pasts. We’re quite specific and particular about what we do though so it would be a character building hell trip for anyone we employ. Liking Metal music would probably be the first hurdle.”

Your clients are incredibly diverse – from distinctly regional customers to national brands like RID Insect Repellent and internationally recognised luxury fashion house Burberry. What is it about MadeKnown and the way you work that’s allowed you to design for such a diverse client list?

“Continually learning about different industries and new client businesses is what we enjoy the most, it’s one of our points of difference. We don’t hold much stock in peddling the same things to each client, they’re all different and so is our service to each of them. Burberry came about from Trent working in-house for them in their Westminster offices in London. They’re comfortable knowing we understand who they are and their standards so it wasn’t a leap of faith to send us work. The time difference is a great benefit as they can send a project at the end of their day and we have it ready when they arrive the following morning.”
“The majority of our work has come from word of mouth and recommendations, which is how we ended up working with RID. They’re based in Townsville and are zealous like us about the quality of regional work so it’s a good match.”

When working with regional clients, have you encountered any barriers around the value of design and brand?

“Definitely, but it’s more a lack of information around what constitutes a brand rather than not valuing it. We’re big on educating and empowering our clients about this, which is partly where our name stems from. We find there is a slow realisation happening in businesses everywhere now, whether metropolitan or regional, that the traditional standalone tactical forms of marketing aren’t as effective anymore. Educating people that branding is more about fostering relationships rather than slapping a logo on a letterhead is hugely important. The word ‘brand’ is greatly overused. We call it the ‘B’ word, our new swear word.”

Working for such high calibre agencies as you have done often exposes designers to new ways of working and thinking. What’s some of the best things you’ve learnt from your time overseas that you’ve been able to apply to your work at MadeKnown?

Fiona: “The confidence to do presentations, the best piece of advice given to me was know back-to-front the first couple minutes of your presentation and the rest will come.”

Trent: “Presentations as well, tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them.”

“For both of us; constantly revisiting ideas and situations to ensure they’re on track and they still apply, generally having a more critical eye for finer details and considering things from many more viewpoints.”

For many creatives inner-city life provides inspiration and a sense of connection. How does this notion fit with you, especially after living and working in a place like London? Where does your inspiration now come from?

“Regional living is culturally different on a local level but we definitely don’t feel isolated. London was fantastic and we still bounce ideas back and forth with friends and mentors there, as well as throughout Australia. We spend time every day catching up on industry news, trends topics etc online through sites like Design Week, AGDA, BrandNew and we get the usual barrage of industry blog newsletters in our inboxes. The biggest source of our inspiration has always come from the same place regardless of where we live, which is our clients and their businesses. It sounds wet I know but they inspire us to do more and that anything is possible.”

Can you tell us about any Queensland artists, designers, illustrators that have caught your attention lately?

“Driven in Brisbane are great story tellers and their work is really textural which we like. Tara Hale is a great illustrator and I always like to see what she is up to. One of our clients in Rocky, HB&Co, design and make the most amazing furniture.”

Do you have any advice for creatives considering the move to a regional area? And also to anyone who may be thinking about starting their own design studio?

• Understand the area you’re moving to and have a business and marketing plan.
• Be patient, smaller communities are very loyal.
• Everyone knows everyone so watch what you say.
• Face to face is best, email doesn’t always cut it. This applies everywhere.
• Get a really good Accountant, they may be bean counters but they’re awesome.
• Don’t skimp on the sound system, you can put on more socks when it’s cold but you can’t turn up tinny speakers.

FAST FACTS:

Your creative hero:
Fiona: Johnson Banks.
Trent: Anthony Peters IMEUS Design in Brighton UK, Antony Micallef.

Your ideal project: Any new brand.

Your favourite podcast/blog:
Trent: Designspiration.
Fiona: BrandNew Under Consideration.

Your hidden talent:
Trent: Patience.
Fiona: Working with Trent.

See the original article on AGDA here

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