Art Month is an annual contemporary art festival celebrating the vibrancy and diversity of visual art in Sydney.

The third annual festival runs from 1 – 25 March 2012, bringing together more than 100 commercial and public galleries, along with artist run initiatives to present an array of exhibitions and events featuring artists from Australia and beyond. Art Month is designed to engage newcomers and existing art lovers alike with a calendar of events including talks, tours, performances, art bars and late night gallery openings.

Building on our work for the 2011 Festival, The Nest continued its support of Art Month by working with the team on their overall digital strategy, leading to the design and development of the 2012 festival site at www.artmonthsydney.com.au/2012/.

In addition to the site, The Nest also created a series of promotional videos for Art Month – view the trailer below and watch all the videos on the Art Month site.

The National Play Festival brings theatre-makers, producers and audiences together in an annual celebration of Australian playwriting and theatre. Presenting a curated season of the most exciting new Australian plays from around the country, as well as special presentations, discussions and industry symposia; the Festival honours the role of new writing as a critical, living part of our story-telling culture.

The Nest designed and delivered an end-to-end execution for the Festival – working as the lead creative agency to develop the brand identity and overall look and feel for the ‘Departures’ season, and implementing the concept to the 2012 web site.

The 2012 Festival site can be found at www.nationalplayfestival.org.au/2012

Having delivered the 2011 app for the Sydney Festival, The Nest worked with the Festival to ‘up the ante’ when considering the mobile strategy for 2012. Advances in mobile technology meant that much of the 2011 app functionality could be achieved on the Festival’s HTML mobile site (also designed by The Nest). Hence an opportunity presented itself to provide much more than a simple ‘what’s on’ guide.

The 2012 app – delivered on both iPhone & Android – allows users to:

• Visually ‘festivalise’ and upload photos to the app and share via Facebook & Twitter;
• Browse the festival program by date, artist, venue, genre or location;
• Add shows to a planner (synced with the website and mobile site)
• See a city wide map of venues, bars, restaurants, hotels and other festival related services

In addition, The Nest worked with the Festival to create a unique interactive component for 2012 – an interactive Treasure Hunt. Festival-goers are invited to complete a series of real-time challenges in order to unlock up to eight Treasure Hunt badges – with each challenge designed to enhance their Festival experience.  From uploading a photo of new friends made at the event, to creating their own unique Fast Festival Feast menu – as challenges are completed, badges are unlocked, and the best entries shared on the Festival blog.  Completing at least five challenges allowed the user unlock the final ‘Ultimate Challenge’, with a new laptop for the final winner.

DOWNLOAD AT ITUNES APP STORE

DOWNLOAD AT ANDROID MARKETPLACE

MONA FOMA is the Museum of Old and New Art’s Festival of Music and Art – and in 2012 entered its fourth record-breaking year as an international attraction in Hobart, and is now firmly established as a highlight of Tasmania’s cultural life.

Designed by MONA FOMA and produced by The Nest, the 2012 MONA FOMA app for iPhone and Android featured:

• Full program of MONA FOMA events,
• Day-by-day Event Calendar
• Map showing location of all festival venues, with event listings for each venue
• Latest News & updates from MONA FOMA with live commentary from Twitter
• Artist details and ticketing information
• FAQ info and links to online resources for MONA FOMA

In addition, the app was used as the sole marketing driver and call to action for the FAUX MO club night, held nightly during the Festival. Venue and line-up details for FAUX MO were released incrementally on the morning of each day during the Festival, all marketing collateral indicated to users that downloading the app would be the only way for them to find out what was on each night. The strategy was a clear success – indeed queues for the opening FAUX MO event surpassed organisers’ expectations, stretching around the block.


DOWNLOAD AT ITUNES APP STORE

DOWNLOAD AT ANDROID MARKETPLACE

The Nest has delivered a new mini-site for acclaimed Australian director and producer, John Polson.  In addition to his film and television career, John Polson is the founder and director of Tropfest, the world’s largest short film festival.

Acting as a straight-forward showreel for John’s work, johnpolsonfilm.com utilises a unique browsing experience, whereby the content is layered on a single page – the user can easily click between layers, or indeed click to drag and reposition any element on the page.  As these options utilise desktop-browser functions, a separate simple mini-site has been built to be viewed on iPad, with a third version built for iPhone and Android.

4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art is a non-profit organisation established in 1996 to support Asian & Australian cultural dialogue. As Australia’s peak national body for contemporary Asian art and cultural thinking, 4A has established a reputation for fostering innovation in contemporary Asian and Australian culture through research, documentation, development, discussion and presentation of contemporary visual art.

The Nest worked with 4A to reshape their web presence into a contemporary format, one that was more directly aligned with the status and vision of the organisation.

The new design and development, complete with Gallery archive and online shop, was built on an extendable, open-source platform, and launched in December 2011. Visit the site at www.4a.com.au.

Artery is the Australia Council’s online source of news and information about artists, events, projects and trends that shape the Australian arts landscape.

The Nest worked with the Australia Council to reimagine the print version of Artery in an online format – both for desktop web browsers, but with an additional focus on developing a secondary set of designs, page layout and functions for iPad tablets.

Artery launched in December 2011 and can be found at artery.australiacouncil.gov.au.

Information and Cultural Exchange (ICE), based in Parramatta in Sydney, works at the intersection of arts, technology and community. For over 25 years they’ve run a program of activities that enable communities and artists to tell the stories of one of Australia’s most dynamic and diverse regions, Greater Western Sydney.

ICE work within a community with roots in 100 different nations and run dozens of projects annually. Their flagship programs are the Switch Digital Arts Centre , and Artfiles, the artist support program and online directory. ICE is also key producer for the Australia Council, a driving force behind the national Arab Film Festival and a key collaborator with the Sydney Festival and Tropfest.

The Nest initially worked with ICE on a series of internal focus groups and workshops, discerning the overall online strategy for the organisation and the opportunities that presented themselves in the digital environment.

As a result of this consultative process, The Nest launched a new online home for ICE in November 2011, presenting their complex volume of projects, outputs, events and people in an easy-to-navigate, open source and extendable platform.

The new site can be found at ice.org.au.

Having delivered the designs for the 2011 site, The Nest was delighted to be once again selected to provide the design for the Sydney Festival 2012 web site. Understanding the successes and the real way in which the 2011 was actually used, the design was adapted and optimised accordingly, predominantly re-considering the placement of key event information and navigation items.

In addition, The Nest also designed the inaugural Sydney Festival mobile site – taking a radically different approach to the design, when considering how the site should work in the portable, mobile format. Rather than simply re-fit the desktop design into the smaller screen size, The Nest restructured the design from the ground-up, taking a more deliberate ‘app-like’ approach to the design.

The Sydney Festival web site can be found at sydneyfestival.org.au/2012 – view this address on a Smartphone to see the m-site in action.

The Nest has designed and developed a new site and online professional network for the Screen Producers Association of Australia (SPAA), titled The Melting Pot.

The Melting Pot is designed to be a place for the Australian screen industry to collaborate, network & discuss screen projects, and is is an offshoot of SPAA Fringe, a two day event aimed at up and coming filmmakers. By joining the Melting Pot community, users are able to post information on themselves and their projects including footage and promo reels. They are then able to network with other users, in order to solicit or seek assistance in many fields, including production and investment. In addition to sections for People and Projects,

the site also includes details on upcoming screenings & SPAA events and a feed of third-party opportunities right across the sector.

Visit The Melting Pot at meltingpot.spaa.org.au