Jurassic Lounge - The Endangered Hipster

The final poster

Jurassic Lounge is a weekly after hours event running over 3 months at The Australian Museum that has been carefully curated by The Festivalists. The event is designed for a young, socially aware audience and aims to reconnect these people with the Museum by mixing music, performance & art amongst the prehistoric environment.

The brief was to develop concepts which will cut through and challenge the perception that the Museum is principally interesting for school children and seniors. Through the concept development process we initially sought to concentrate on a very modern & hip graphic which used experimental typography, strong colour and deconstructed graphics - in a similar aesthetic as underground music might do. But this approach ignored the fact the the museum has a distinctly unique atmosphere & is not a nightclub but a place of discovery.

Concept Development & Process

We decided the best route to achieving this was to challenge the perceptions front on and contrast against our target market.  Juxtaposing the modern with the prehistoric in a humourous manner would speak directly to a very savvy audience and visually would illustrate the old vs new.

Initial sketched concepts for the visual identity

Building on this we drew inspiration from the retro charm of museums and sketched 5 concepts which centered on placing hipsters or modern technology in ancient circumstances.  These included specimen cabinets (substituting butterflies with pinned down hipsters), an illustrated earth cross-section featuring buried artifacts - bones, basic tools and then as it gets deeper more modern items such as iPods, and the ambitious recreation of a dinosaur diorama with a hipster being chased.

Shooting & Production

After much discussion with clients, it was collectively decided that the diorama concept was the strongest and was to proceed. It plays upon peoples traditional views of museums full of models & introduces the modern with a taxidermied hipster trying to escape, in the process losing records & his mirror ball.

Carnival sought the collaboration of the esteemed photographer Simon Cardwell who has shot for many of Australia's most successful films (Tomorrow When The War Began, Mao's Last Dancer) as well as the fashion industry.  His experience with talent was important in bringing out the best from our hipster model Marc Brandon, who perfectly captured the right look of our target audience and bought the tongue in cheek tone we were trying to capture.

The shoot took place after hours at the Australian Museum where Marc and the dinosaurs were shot separately and then further pick-up shots of grass, dirt & water we captured from other exhibits.  Having separate elements was integral to building the diorama exactly how we had imagined, and the only stock photography required was for the painted background.

Shooting on location at the Australian Museum

Imaging, design & finished art stages.

We did a lot of online research into traditional dioramas with the Natural History Museum in the USA having some amazingly elaborate creations.  From a digital composition angle, the challenges we faced we to first piece together our subjects from multiple shots to get the right balance and sense of frozen action. The final raptor up being a combination of different images/raptors with legs, & arms and heads all substituted.  Another challenge was to create the depth required and the fine aspects of diorama cabinets where the sand & water is encased by glass and reveals a cross-section.  Through the pick-up shots we were able to craft our foreground with various tufts of grass, logs and the creek bed which was actually the freshwater crocodile display in the Museum.  With a strong client dialogue, we were able to quickly move into final retouching & grading for the finished art.

Building our raptor from many images, Image composite coming together.

In addition to the heavy image compositing required, the typography & title development was to play a major role in selling the event to the intended audience.  We experimented a great deal with hand-drawn letterforms as well as more industrial type treatments and finally arrived at the current treatment which sought to be playful, strong and hint at prehistoric elements such as earth cross-sections.

The scroll banner in middle bottom with its multi-toned tagline 'Art, Music & New Ideas - Every Thursday at Dusk' further enforces the modern tones and seeks to contrast with the diorama scene.

We sought to really balance the young vs old and create a design that cheekily made fun of perceptions / stereotypes (be it of the Museum or Hipsters) and challenge people to discover it for themselves.

William Street / Museum - billboard in situ

We would like to give special thanks to Mathieu Ravier and team at The Festivalists & The Australian Museum (especially Mark Connolly) for being fantastic, collaborative clients. We would also like to give a massive thank you to Simon Cardwell who did an amazing job shooting the project, Marc Brandon agreeing to be dinosaur dinner / model and to our Carney Jonathan Coucoulas for styling and Mike James for the additional imaging.

Click here for more detail images

Client: The Festivalists / Australian Museum    Art Direction & Design:  Demi Hopkins / Carnival Studio    Photography: Simon Cardwell   Styliing: Jonathan Coucoulas / Carnival Studio
Model: Marc Brandon   Additional retouching: Mike James