Welcome to the blog of Johannesburg creative agency Nicework. A fine selection of the best creative ideas, art, design and advertising.
Nicework is a young, successful, growing business. Niceworkians are a talented, hard working and generally happy bunch. We try to create an environment where people are heard, ideas are nurtured and work gets done brilliantly. If this sounds like your cup of tea, do get in touch.
Right now there is space for a:
Visit our career page or direct correspondence to info@nicework.co.za
The latest NICE Magazine is out and available for download! For this issue we have chosen “Stuff” as our theme, which is inspired by the coming festive season. We have carefully selected a great mix of design, illustration, advertising, art and design objects that we think stands out from the rest. This issue is definitely one of our biggest and best.
Follow these instructions to get your hands on one, it’s cool and free!
We did a Q&A with emergent South African photographer Leonard Miller, whose pictures are a sight to behold. We have an impressive list of illustrators for you to look at, including: Ben Newman, Caracrimen, Grand Chamaco and Denise Nestor. Kristian Kasi’s typography will definitely make you look twice, particularly because he is creating such epic work at the meagre age of 19. Kyle Tezak and Marius Wathne, astound us with their amazing graphic design, while Leah Goren adds some sartorial magic to the magazine with her beautiful textile designs. We also have some great industrial design on show, from Score & Solder’s one of-a-kind terrariums, to ceramic planters by Farrah Sit, an indoor croquet set by Romain Lagrange and great leather accessories from local design house Matblac. Experimental artists and designers, JAILmake, made us think outside of the box with their conceptual furniture design. Also expect some thought-provoking advertising and beautiful packaging design to round off this excellent issue.
Last but not least, we have compiled a Nicework wish list that profiles the things we would most like to find in our Christmas stockings – check out the teaser video.
Nicework Christmas List from Nicework on Vimeo.
In addition to sharing cool things with you on a daily basis, Nicework has decided to start sharing our skills and expertise. We have just launched a Thoughts Blog that provides valuable information about creative problem solving, branding, design, animation, code and copywriting…all the things that we do best. Why not take a trip over there? You may learn something.
This image is a sneak peak of the excitement you can expect…
We are very proud to announce that one of our favourite clients won a Silver Assegai Award last night in the “CRM and Loyalty” category.
Nicework has been working together with The SA Consumer Initiative over the past year to refresh their brand through great design, funny copy and top-notch web design and development. We are so happy it paid off. Well done to everyone involved. Below is a snapshot of the boards we designed for The SA Consumer Initiative’s Assegai entry.
We are happy to announce the winners of our engraved notebook giveaway today, which we randomly selected from all the entries. Thank you to everyone who entered.
Congratulations to our winners:
You will all be receiving your very own laser engraved notebook, courtesy of Nicework! We will be in touch via email soon with the details. To those who didn’t win, never fear, there will be more awesome giveaways in the future.
The latest NICE Magazine is out and available for download! For this issue we have chosen “Forks & Knives” as our theme and it’s all about food. Expect an aesthetic mix of design, illustration, advertising, art and publishing that celebrates food, cooking and eating in all its forms.
Follow these instructions to get your hands on one, it’s cool and free!
So what do we have on the menu for this issue? We profile American photographer Michael Muller who gives us an intimate portrayal of his creative process and his daily life. Our favourite food bloggers share recipes that are a delight to look at and even better to eat. We showcase some really beautiful ceramics from Reiko Kaneko, as well as textile, ceramic and paper works from multi-talented illustration duo Zosienka & Rosie. We explore alternative dining experiences with our profiles on Sometimes Dining and Simply Saffron. Glasfurd & Walker show us how it’s done with their beautiful restaurant design and Kelli Anderson makes a difference with her design for a solar-powered popsicle truck. We also have some sterling design for you to feast our eyes on from Aïssa Logerot, Yii, Ben Johnston and Studiomama. Our “Best in Show: Food Edition” rounds up the tastiest grub (in our humble opinion) available in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. Our features of illustrators Lina Forsgren, Amy Borrell and Ed Nacional also add some creative flair to our culinary line-up. So what are you waiting for? Download it now!
Want to win 1 of 4 limited edition engraved notebooks? All you need to do to enter is make a comment on this blog post (please include your correct email address so we can get in contact). It’s as easy as pie. These notebooks were designed by one of our talented designers Rowan Toselli. Winners will be announced on the 14th of November 2011. Good luck!
Every year An Event Apart and Mix Online collaborate for a web application competition, 10K Apart. Some rules include: the app must be no bigger than 10K (to give you an idea of how small that is, the image below is about 60K) and the application must me responsive.
This year I decided to submit an app to the competition. Since I have recently started using the Gautrain to commute to work I decided to write an app to work out how much money I will save commuting by train rather than by car. Because of the size limit I couldn’t use any images so the whole app is just code (HTML, CSS and Javascript).
Check out the Gautrain Fare Calculator!
Browse through some of the other apps here. There are some truly inspiring submissions this year!
21 different business card variations to promote the launch of our new website. It was a great project because we were free to interpret the brief in anyway we saw fit. Here is a selection of some of the cards created by Ross Drakes, Rowan Toselli, Arline Stoffberg and Catherine Green.
Ross Drakes
Rowan Toselli
Arline Stoffberg
Catherine Green
The latest NICE Magazine is out and available for download! Expect the usual dose of top-notch design, art, publishing and illustration from the world’s finest creatives.
Follow these instructions to get your hands on one, it’s cool and free!
The fourth issue of NICE magazine is all about colour.
So what do we have on offer for this issue? We profile illustrator Grady McFerrin who gave us some really useful insights on being a successful illustrator. Infographic wizards: Tien-Min Liao and Peter Ørntoft will make you look at data visualisation in an entirely different way. French design studio Zim & Zou let us showcase their colourful paper installation, which is the coolest thing we have seen in a long time. The bold paintings of Guim Tió Zarraluki throws a critical eye on the concepts of beauty and glamour, while the body art of Amanda Wachob, blurs the boundary between fine art and body art.
For those design-orientated individuals, the work of creative duo Craig & Karl and the diverse portfolio of Christopher Bettig is sure to hit the spot. Get your industrial design and furniture fix from our features on Hekseskudd and the UM Project. Our feature on the new IKEA baking book “Homemade is Best” is sure to get you baking up a storm in no time. We also have some great features on illustrator Blake Suarez and artists Ana Montiel and Marco Ugolini.
For our regular “Ten Things” feature we asked each of our four contributors to select a colour and create a collection of meaningful things around it. They came up with some phenomenal colour collections. Also expect some colourful examples of great advertising and packaging design.
Nicework | All work copyright Nicework communications 2010
