The Cat Piano is the latest animated film from Australian studio The People’s Republic of Animation. It’s won the Best Animated Short category in both the Sydney Film Festival and Melbourne International Film Festival.

Sydney’s International Food Festival kicks off in October 2009. To raise public awareness of the event, Whybin TBWA have recreated the flags of twelve countries using ingredients from their national dishes. Check out a gallery below.

Hobo Gestapo, Isobel Knowles, Aeons, Crozynski, and Lilian Darmono are just some of the Australian artists, musicians and designers commissioned by a gum brand to create engaging digital content.

‘Crate Man’ is another great example of Melbourne’s diverse street art scene. Constructed from vibrantly painted milk crates, the huge figures have been found scaling fences, hanging off cranes, perched on rooftops and even fishing in a creek.

Image credit: Getty Images, Julie A. Ziesemann/Flickr
The Australian Graphic Design Association’s conference ‘How Can Graphic Design Help Save the World’ recently shed some light on the ways graphic designers can design a better world.  Speakers included Visual Communication Design lecturer Jacqueline Gothe, Animal Logic founder Andy Polaine, graphic and environmental designer David Berman; and design, media and visual culture writer Rick Poynor.
Andy Polaine explains the meaning behind the conference title:
“Most wicked problems stem from many small acts of thoughtlessness ” says Andy. “At home in Germany, I did the right thing and took my old TV [...]

Last year PSFK wrote about Knitta Please – the worldwide guerrilla knitting collective who wrap and detail urban-based objects in bright yarns.  Sydney-based suburb of Darlinghurst recently received some of their own knitted magic from the hands of Newtown knitter Denise Litchfield.  Wrapping Sydney’s oldest functional underground “heritage toilet” in Taylor Square, Litchfield started planning the project back in May 2009.  Read more about it at The Knitted Convenience.
[via Darlinghurst Nights]

Industrial designer Ben Landau and felt / soft sculpture artist Brittany Veitch have created a range of wearable living couture accessories to bring elements of nature into urban living.  Each Bio Accessory has a living component of which the wearer must tend to, whilst the accessory works to block the unappealing aspects of urban living; masking sounds, sights and scents with a little greenery, bird calls and fresh air.  According to the Australian design duo the accessories represent ‘mobile natural environments’ designed to be the perfect symbiotic relationship.  Bio-Accessories is currently exhibiting at the Melbourne City Library till August [...]

Last Sunday Melbourne residents were offered the unique opportunity to view some of the city’s most interesting buildings, normally off limits to the public.  In total thirty buildings opened their doors to the public for Melbourne Open House , with the Melbourne Unity building, Town Hall and Offices attracting a 4660-strong crowd of onlookers interested in the city’s history and architecture. See a gallery of images from the tour below.

In January this year PSFK wrote about Perth’s street art group Ololo and their Condor Tower Carpark Project.  This Saturday Ololo will launch their project,  with many claiming the car park is the largest permanent street art exhibition in the southern hemisphere.  Taking twelve months to complete, Ololo was initially asked to brighten up the entrance, but the project soon grew with the group covering the entire car park, from the pillars, ramps and walls, right down to the smallest wedges and gaps.  Around fifty local and national artists contributed, including Stormie Mills, Reka One, Creepy, Yok, Pat Doherty, Daek, [...]

PSFK recently wrote about Monocle’s Top 25 Most Liveable Cities 2009. Even though Melbourne made it into the top 10, Michael from linefeed has some innovative store concepts to boost the city’s retail sector. Believing that the city lacks quirky, niche stores Michael states; When I think of [...]

Touted as the ‘Craigslist’ for creatives, Creative Caravan is an online house swap / temporary sublet listing service strictly for those working within the areas of advertising, media, fashion, art and design.

The Nigerian film industry, a.k.a. Nollywood is the new subject of an exhibition at Sydney’s Australian Center for Photography.  Producing between five hundred to one thousand films a year, Nollywood is the third biggest film industry to date.  Despite often being ”low budget, violent and excessive”, Nollywood films outsell Hollywood films on the African market.
Working alongside well-known Nigerian actors, South-African photographer Pieter Hugo has recreated typical scenes that reflect the little-known-about Nollywood industry.
The exhibition runs from Friday 12 June to Saturday 11 July at 257 Oxford St, Paddington, Sydney
Related Post: Nollywood Babylon: Rise of the Nigerian Film Industry

PSFK recently wrote about the crowd-sourced-design of Australian beer ‘Nelson’.  The Melbourne-based micro brewery has recently teamed up with local Indie band The Temper Trap to design a limited-edition label for the brew.  The now London-based band collaborated alongside graphic artist Reece Hobbins to visually represent their unique sound.
Mess and Noise explains:
a white silhouetted human profile, which symbolises the mind as the “hub of emotion” and the human “condition” (a reference to their debut album Conditions, out tomorrow). The maze leading up the neck represents the obscurity of the Nelson beer project, as well as a sense of “confusion that [...]

Seek, an Australian online job search firm, is finding social opportunities in this economic crisis. The company, with the help of The Boston Consulting Group, is using its technology platform to match volunteer do-gooders with non-profit organizations all over the country.

Australia already has a long-established history of corporations participating in community causes but the recent scarcity of jobs, the persistent drought and the tragic bushfires that erupted earlier this year is increasing national demand to reach out. Seek Volunteer – which claims to earn no revenues for its services – seems to have come at just the right time judging [...]

Architecture firm CODA has produced an interesting take on an old idea.  The West-Australian-based firm designed the redevelopment of an old horse farm for a local drug and alcohol rehabilitation center.  Created to aid recovering patients the farm will house and rehabilitate abused horses.  CODA used recycled materials for the project and chose colours that would be “both uplifting and soothing for residents.”
CODA explains:
We sought to reuse as many of the materials as we could from the farm itself and develop a construction system that could be executed by many enthusiastic but largely untrained ‘builders’. The total budget for [...]