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Metagraphics

Murals and Design Services

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June 18, 2020 By James Alley

Starbucks Floral Mural

We were engaged by Starbucks for a recent mural project in their Northlake location.

Set in the middle of the food court near cinema and high traffic areas, this mural needed to compliment the open exterior design which uses raw timber to maximum effect. I was really happy with how this hand painted mural turned out.

Starbucks Mural Detail
Starbucks Mural Detail

I focussed on large leaf patterns and shapes based on traditional botanical illustrations leaving the exposed wood as it is because I love how the image works on this texture.

Starbucks “expose our craft in everything we do. We paint, draw, print, stamp, hand-letter and more, highlighting our creative passion”. They seek to celebrate imperfections— bring humanity and reflect life in a raw, genuine way.

We developed concepts that helped Starbucks achieve their goals to “engage the senses in an unpackaged and textural way, bringing the brand to life and evoking the feeling of being there.”

Starbucks Mural Detail
Starbucks Mural Detail

To achieve the desired artful, expressive and imaginative brief we embraced the natural effect of the wooden surface and used a limited palette.

The finished result seeks to “Reflect how the Starbucks brandunfolds, going deeper and beyond the obvious first look. Bringing dimension, texture and nuance to the design.”

Filed Under: Art, Featured Work, Illustration, Mural Production, Street Art Brisbane

June 18, 2020 By James Alley

Office Outer Space Mural

This was a lot of fun!

The client were in the middle of an office refurb when they decided to engage me for a mural to bring a dull staircase to life.

We went through a few design ideas before settling on setting the CEO up in an astronaut suit to fill the void.

Filed Under: Art, concept art, Featured Work, Illustration

June 18, 2020 By James Alley

Student Accomodation Mural

This project was for the Student one accomodation building in Brisbane City.

We were super excited to be a part of this job. It’s not every day you get to make artwork for 38 levels.

Residential Mural Detail
Apartment Mural Detail

Student one seek to “connect students through positive experiences, by delivering a unique and student-centric living environment.”

We used this idea of connection and positive experiences as a basis for our designs which fill the entries building and turn a bland “concrete jungle” into a dynamic, vibrant and youthful space.

Residential Mural Detail
Apartment Mural Detail

Student one is “so much more than a place of residence for students. Thanks to all the little extra details” and our murals help create those extra details.

The stencil artworks line the walls on each level as you exit the elevator and hear to your accomodation.

Residential Mural Detail
Apartment Mural Detail

By creating diversity and variety within the designs we were also able to use the artworks to create a sense of direction and help develop some much needed place making by adjusting colours and geometric shapes for each different level.

Residential Mural Detail
Apartment Mural Detail

Filed Under: Art, creativity, Featured Work, Illustration, Street Art Brisbane

June 18, 2020 By James Alley

Brisbane City Council Mural

We recently completed a mural for the Brisbane City Councils “Brisbane Canvas” project.

The imagery incorporated the local Aspley areas iconic features as well as drwing inspiration from the the curatorial rationale Exchange developed by the Placemaking Team, Design Brisbane.

The Gympie Road corridor is one of the oldest overland routes for the development of  modern Brisbane, and indeed adapted from a former and far older Aboriginal pathway. 

Da Burger Mural
West End Mural

Aspley is strategically sited at Brisbane’s northern boundary to provide a way‐point and stop‐over for trade and traffic passing along that route – with the Royal Exchange Hotel operating as a Cobb & Co pick‐up point and watering hole for bullocks.

Aspley was far north enough from the city centre to cater to its own needs and in many ways it can be seen as an epicentre of suburban developments, experiencing the rise of early industry, the waves of post war housing developments, and in‐flux of the big brand commercial shopping centres.

Much of this twentieth century mass manufactured design, aimed at affordability and equity of living standard, resulted in a monocultural sameness.

The post‐Fordist economies of today’s postmodern society have seen the explosion of niche markets, creative industries, communications networks and information-based businesses with a resultant diversification of lifestyles, social formations, and to some extent, built environments – both new and repurposed. 

Da Burger Mural

The notion of exchange, as applied within a modernist historical framework, operates as a mechanism of standardisation – commercial exchange through standardised pricing, common currency, product branding and packaging, mass marketing, and so on. However, notions of exchange are today appreciated as being far more complex. 

In fact, exchange may be less about equivalence – the swapping of discrete entities – and far more about their interaction, catalytic effects, offshoots and entanglements. 

The boundaries between things are not as discrete as once imagined and degrees of inter‐dependence are newly appreciated as profound and intricate. The artist is the bricoleur – finding value and interest in discarded detritus, bringing together the disparate, confounding high and low cultures, making precious the everyday.

Artworks reveal the complexity of exchange, shifting the literal into the symbolic, connecting cultural practices with sensory experience, confounding image, appearance and substance. 

An artwork commissioned for this harsh, highly commercialised urban environment, may express an alternative sense of place – a sense of exchange that is beyond equivalence, that may be transformative and even magical.

Drawing upon the site’s marginalised cultural and environmental threads, it may amplify, trace and release intercultural understandings and a humanising sense of attachment. Informed by impulses organic and sensual, the artwork might embody the endless rupture and coalescence of exchange, unknowing and unknowable. 

Filed Under: Art, Featured Work, Illustration, Metagraphics, Mural Production

August 22, 2017 By James Alley

The creative life

It’s hard work sticking to the creative field. I think it has to be in your blood.

After speaking to a friend from design college who is now working in real estate I’m reminded that many of my professional colleagues in the creative industry, and even more friends from University, are no longer in the design field.

The first wave dropped out shortly after uni. I must admit it was pretty defeating for me, hounding design studio’s for 6 months before finally being given an amazing opportunity at Billabong. I sometimes wonder if that initial test of endurance created in me a tenacity to stick with the creative industries.

Even with the amazing opportunity that presented itself though, I notice another wave of colleagues change courses when those inital “foot in the door” opportunities didn’t have the prestige that most designers are hungry for. Mine certainly didn’t. I was spending 3 days out of 5 pretty much entering data into sales catalogues. But while I watched colleagues use the other 2 days to read articles online and take long lunch breaks, I found my job satisfaction in practicing my design and illustration techniques.

Perseverance and practice got me into a great art directing role but they also taught me to enjoy the process that has kept me designing and refining as a professional for 20 years. Because unless you love the process you won’t stay long in the design field. And there are definitely parts of the process I have hated and that have worn me down.

The possibilities have only increased as I keep persevering, practicing but the process is something I have learnt to trust. I’m a big believer in the idea that practice, perseverance and a love of the process lead to possibilities. Look at that, alliteration!

So what?

Well I guess if you’re on a creative path I want to encourage you to stick with it. Keep refining it. If you persevere with the practice and process then unexpected possibilities will come. The creative spark that got you started will never die if you find a way to let it keep warming your soul.

Filed Under: Art, Business, creativity, Graphic Design, Illustration, Opinion, Personal Tagged With: Brisbane Illustration, contemporary illustration, Graphic Art, Graphic Design, Transcendance

July 5, 2017 By James Alley

Helping is helpful

If it’s free and it works you might as well take it.

I’ve been employing interns since I opened a studio space. I haven’t gone looking for them but every few weeks I will get a recent graduate or high school student asking to hang out and learn something.

Invariably I learn something from them or I learn something from having to teach what I know. Amazing how knowledge grows and expands as you pass it on to others.

One of the projects I like to give most interns involves a bit of self reflection and forces them to think about three key aspects of there life.

Who they are and where they are from
What they are good at
What they would like to see change in the world

It’s usually an illustration task but I always enjoy giving it to interns and I especially like hearing their responses. the process doesn’t take much time but as we talk about the work they create as a response to these prompts my understanding of these 3 aspects in my own life and work become more clear to me.

I don’t know how or why it works on a neurological level, but what I’ve experienced in mentoring is that it never fails to cause growth in my own understanding and practice.

Filed Under: Articles, creativity, Editorial, Illustration, Metagraphics, Opinion, Personal

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  • Email help (at) metagraphics.com.au
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Metagraphics is located in Brisbane, but we love to travel to new and exciting destinations.
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4 / 30 Board St Deagon, Brisbane, Q 4017

Metagraphics specialise in murals for interior design and shopfitting projects.
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