Background: According to their brand identities, Victoria is “The Place To Be” and Tasmania is somewhere to “Explore The Possibilities”. In a different approach, New South Wales and Queensland don’t feature a prominent tagline at all, instead they simply state they are a government.

Returning to Tasmania after a year living in shotty Scotland, I was able to catch in one go the whole rebranding episode, viz., I met the symbol with shutterspeed exposure, and naturally that’s the only chance a little symbol gets.  I’m a collector of badges- I have ten though I’ve looked at thousands.  The focus has to be ridiculously efficient, the symbol has to be both feminine and masculine (like a Jungian lolly) and as elemental as Scorpius in the sky, that is, the eye won’t want to join more than seven or ten dots.  Read more

Design is about culture. In the same way that the state of our education or healthcare system tells us a lot about who we are as society, design is also capable of reflecting back to us who we are and what we care about, and the value of things, good and bad. Read more

Background: The last confirmed Thylacine died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936. Since then over 3,800 sightings have been reported to the Australian Rare Fauna Research Association. In spite of these claims, in 1986 the Thylacine was declared extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Just to be clear, I sincerely hope that Cloudy Bay never looks like Noosa, but perhaps it’s inevitable.

I remember the 90s jingle ‘you can make it in Tasmania’… one assumed those responsible ‘doth protest too much’ and tended to lean towards the opposite. We naturally distrust branding – the attempt to create an image for an entity. To bring something or someone back into the world anew, to take an ‘existing’ and move it towards a ‘preferred’, to affect a perceptual shift through the suspension of disbelief. Read more

Just a quick note. Some lovely folk from within a certain Government department have been in touch and I believe we are now on the radar, so let’s do this thing!

The notion of branding anything with something extinct is bizarre – especially when it pertains to the erasure of indigenous fauna. And yet there is the mystery aspect, the energy of ‘what if’ of rediscovering, the suggestion of wildness and intrigue that products such as Cascade beer successfully exploit. Ultimately I think The Tassie Tiger remains our most specific and enduring symbol. Read more

There are few things that stir up public discussion more than issues of identity. It could be anything from a debate about enforcing our borders, saying sorry, becoming a republic, changing the education system, demolishing a landmark, Shapelle Corby guilty/innocent…the list goes on. Fact is, if an issue threatens to define who we are in some way, the individual perspective (well informed or otherwise) becomes validated and we naturally feel the urge to express our opinion. Read more

We are now calling for submissions to this blog, prior to our formal launch next week. Over the following six weeks we will be exploring a broad spectrum of ideas, relating to the current and future brand identity of the Tasmanian Government. If you have an opinion we’d love to hear it in whatever form it might take. Drop us a line anytime: jonathan@southsouthwest.com.au

“The Tasmanian Tiger even peers from car number plates with the slogan Explore The Possibilities, suggesting perhaps, that extinction is one of the possibilites we are being invited to explore…”

The above quote comes from his new book titled “In search of Hobart”.