Hot Kiwi shops take home Aussie Hotshops
A Lean Year
The crafty, multidisciplinary creative boffins from Alt Group have nabbed a double whammee in Australia’s CREATIVE magazine Hotshop Awards, with the company crowned design agency of the year and in-house agency of the year. And Wellywood’s digi-gurus Resn also took home a gong for the second year running for best digital and interactive agency.
Just another day at the office for Alt Group, really, which has raked in a total of 60 international and national awards in the last 12 months, most recently winning two awards for excellence in font design in the Tokyo Type Directors Club annual awards. And same goes for Resn, which continues its winning form (check out the sweetness of Toyota’s Sponsafier site, which Resn created for Saatchis in Los Angeles).
The awards, which are now in their sixth year, are judged by a panel of industry leaders and asked entrants to ‘Show Us Something Different’, aim to reward Australasian ad agencies, designers, and production and photography studios that are producing clever, unique and effective solutions for their clients by pioneering fresh styles, techniques and strategies.
This year’s Hotshop judges described Alt Group as “seriously playful but not without smarts” and said it was a unanimous decision to award the company the Design Agency of the Year title. They praised the “courageous personality, attention to detail and quality of diverse creative work,” with one judge commenting that the designs were “delightful, smart, thoughtful, plus exceptionally crafted – I couldn’t take my eyes off it.”
Vigneron
“I wanted to absorb every little detail and no detail was overlooked,” said the judge of Alt’s collection of work, which included pieces such as the Vigneron book and packaging project, Selecon branding and Formway Design’s Thinking outside the chair.
Alt Group took out the newly created in-house agency of the year award for ‘A Lean Year,’ a cheeky gift the firm designed for its clients to celebrate the end of 2009 that took the form of a leaning wine bottle.
To create it, Alt Group produced 160 bottles that were slumped in moulds in a glass kiln and filled with “the modest grape”, Merlot.
“Alt Group’s droopy bottle quickly communicates the bruising the creative process has taken,” said the judges of ‘A Lean Year’. “It was elegant, simple and enigmatically black.”
Another judge described it as a “lovely, simple idea that say’s we survived the year together; quite charming and personal.”
Resn’s designated spokeshuman and senior digital strategist Andy Williams says: “We’re super tired after winning the Digital & Interactive Creative Hotshop Award for the 2nd year running. I think we’re going to take it a bit easier now. And I think we’re also going to have to throw the stuffed polar bear away to make room in our trophy room for all these awards.”
The overall Hotshop award went to Happy Soldiers and, in the advertising field, Droga5 took the the top spot, beating Leo Burnett Sydney
Publicis Mojo Sydney and Three Drunk Monkeys to the punch.
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